What are the implications of the death of the long-time ruler of the Soviet Union, Iosif Stalin, on 5 March 1953 to the broader international context and especially the Korean War? Regarding internal-external linkage in international politics, Kenneth Waltz and other structural realists have argued that the study of domestic politics is of little relevance to an understanding of system-level change. Based on the newly declassified archival materials and firsthand accounts from Western and former Communist countries, the author tries to determine whether purely domestic changes in one state can indeed have important effects not only on other countries, but on the whole international system. Stalin whose conviction had made him believe that a war would soon break out in Europe and attenuating U.S. military capabilities in Korea would serve as a diversion to help USSR win in Europe insisted that the Korean War continues in despite the misgivings of Chinese and North Korean leaders. By May 1953, no one in the Soviet leadership doubted any longer that the time had come for a settlement in Korea. Thus Stalin’s death opened a way for a group of high-ranking political leaders to carry out a flurry of political reforms. The impetus for far-reaching changes in Soviet foreign policy thus came mainly from above. Particularly Soviet leaders could now move away from long-entrenched position of Stalin’s “mistaken policy” in Korea towards the rapid cessation of the war in the spring and early summer of 1953. Soviet policy in the spring and early summer of 1953 changed almost completely from what it had been only a short time earlier under Stalin. Thus the cease-fire negotiations bore fruits in the armistice signed on 26 July.