In the USSR in 1953, General Secretary Joseph Stalin is listening to a concert on the radio and orders that a recording of it be delivered to him. The concert has to be hurriedly repeated and recorded, but the pianist, Maria Yudina, hides a note to Stalin in the sleeve of the record, saying he has ruined the country. As Stalin reads the note in his dacha, he suffers a Intracerebral hemorrhage and becomes paralysed. The members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union are alerted. The first to arrive are Ministry of Internal Affairs (Soviet Union) (NKVD) head Lavrentiy Beria, who discovers Yudina's note, and Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union Georgy Malenkov. As Malenkov panics, Beria encourages him to take the leadership, hoping to use him as a Puppet ruler.