Before sunrise on August 1, 1939, a military coup led by General Georgi Zhukov removed Joseph Stalin from power in the Soviet Union. On Zhukov's orders, Stalin was summarily executed and the entire cabinet was replaced by Red Army officers loyal to Zhukov. The USSR went from a Communist state to a military dictatorship.
With Zhukov in power, the purges begun by Stalin ended. Those military officers fortunate to be allowed to live were restored to their last military rank. By the end of 1939, the Red Army increased by 30 percent.
When Hitler ordered the Heer and Luftwaffe to cross the border into Ukraine, the Red Army was ready. After losing 90 percent of its troops, the Wehrmacht was forced to cross back into Poland. It was the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.
Suppose Stalin was able to prevent the coup from happening.
Would the Russians still have been able to kick the Germans out of Poland by the summer of 1941?
Would the Russians still have been able to Sakhalin and the Kuril islands from the Japanese?
Would Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang have won the Chinese Civil War had Stalin remained in power?
What roles would Lazar Kaganovich and Lavrenti Beria have played if Stalin survived the coup (IOTL, Beria was executed by a firing squad a week after the removal of Stalin. Kaganovich was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia and died in 1943)?
And would the road to democratization in Russia be delayed if Stalin stayed in power? IOTL, Zhukov allowed popular elections to the Duma in 1950 (the majority of seats were not elected and were held by military officers appointed by Zhukov). By 1963, all seats in the Duma were held by elected politicians with the United Patriotic Party heading a coalition government.