1953 in the Soviet Union

The following lists events that happened during 1953 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Incumbents

 * First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – Nikita Khrushchev (starting 14 September)
 * Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union – Nikolay Shvernik (until 19 March), Kliment Voroshilov (starting 19 March)
 * Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union – Joseph Stalin (until 5 March), Georgy Malenkov (starting 6 March)

Events

 * Doctors' plot

March

 * 5 March – Joseph Stalin dies, starting a power struggle among Soviet leadership.

May

 * 26 May – 4 August – Norilsk uprising

July

 * 19 July – 1 August – Vorkuta uprising

August

 * 12 August – Joe 4, the first Soviet test of a thermonuclear weapon occurs.
 * 23 August – RDS-4 is first tested.

Births

 * 21 January – Larisa Shoygu, politician (d. 2021)
 * 31 January – Aron Atabek, Kazakh writer and dissident (d. 2021)
 * 14 February – Sergey Mironov, politician
 * 27 November – Boris Grebenshchikov, rock musician
 * 30 December – Oleksandr Sviatotskyi, jurist

Deaths

 * 1 January – Maksim Purkayev, Soviet general (born 1894)
 * 13 February – Lev Mekhlis, Red Army officer (born 1889)
 * 5 March
 * Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union (born 1878)
 * Sergei Prokofiev, composer (born 1891)
 * 31 March – Ivan Lebedeff, actor (born 1895)
 * 4 May – Nikolai Cholodny, microbiologist (died 1953)
 * 8 November – Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, writer (born 1870)
 * 23 December
 * Lavrentiy Beria, former leader of NKVD (born 1899)
 * Vsevolod Merkulov, former Minister of State Security of the Soviet Union (born 1895)
 * Bogdan Kobulov, senior member of Soviet security and police apparatus (born 1904)