Wolfpaw
Banned
This is very much dependent on the POD. If Stalin stays in Moscow and the Germans are victorious, then yes, I agree, the whole thing will probably go down the shitter for the USSR.Total breakdown of the CCCP, I am afraid.
Stalin's cult was too ingrained in '40 CCCP society not to be one of the fundamental factors of russian resistance to the invasion.
His death in concomitance with a massive foreign invasion would be sure signs of the apocalypse
If Stalin flees Moscow and joins the rest of the Politburo in Kuybyshev, however, there is a good chance that Moscow will fall since that is really going to annihilate a lot of the defenders' morale. This will, in all likelihood, lead to Stalin being removed from power by the Politburo and most likely executed.
Basically, so long as the Politburo can control its own fate, things will probably be fine. Moscow won't be the decisive victory the Germans need unless they manage to get Stalin's head on a platter.
With regards to Stalin's cult being too ingrained in '40, that's incredibly iffy. A good number of Soviet citizens (possibly a majority, definitely the peasantry) actually hated the guy with a passion.
Once the War started, however, and Soviet citizens began to see the horrors that Nazi rule would bring, they very quickly rallied around Stalin. It was the War and the nationalism that Stalin came to embrace and (rightly or wrongly) embody that became the roots of his cult of personality. Prior to 1941, though, he and his cult (which, again, was mostly urban-based) are on much more unsteady ground.