Lenin also moved the capital to Moscow, and after his death in 1924, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. After the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, that city's name was restored to what it was before the failed Russian Revolution of 1905: St. Petersburg. As was said at the time, "Better to name it for a saint than for a monster."
In March, there was (again, because of the discrepancy of the calendars) the February Revolution, forcing Czar Nicholas II to abdicate his imperial throne. But the provisional government, led by Alexander Kerensky, could not feed the country, get it out of World War I, or free the farmers from the owners of their land. Lenin promised them "Peace, land and bread." It is a bit ironic to say of the most successful exponent that Communism has ever had, "They bought what he was selling." But they did.
On July 14, 1918, the Bolsheviks had the Czar, his wife, their 4 children, and as many living members of the House of Romanov as they could find executed, to remove the focal point for any opposition Lenin might have.
Kerensky died in exile in 1940. He outlived the Czar and his family, Lenin (1924), Leon Trotsky (1940), and Joseph Stalin (1953).
We may never know how sports in Russia would have developed had either the Czars or the provisional government under Kerensky had lasted. Some dictators understand how sports can be used to spread propaganda for their government at home and for their country abroad. The fascist dictators of the 1930s did: Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Mussolini of Italy, and Francisco Franco of Spain.
Lenin and Stalin did not use sports to their advantage. Lenin was too busy trying to keep his country from flying apart to care. Stalin is only known to have attended 1 sporting event in his life, a soccer demonstration on Moscow's Red Square itself.
But Nikita Khrushchev certainly used the Olympics to spread Red propaganda, and Leonid Brezhnev used the 1980 Olympics in Moscow to do so. Vladimir Putin is a former judo champion, although he's not nearly as good at hockey as he's been allowed to think he is -- much like Fidel Castro and his pitching. Putin used the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and the 2018 World Cup to spread the Russian image.
One thing is for sure: If the Bolsheviks had failed, the 1972 Summer Olympic basketball tournament, the 1972 "Summit Series" between Canada and the Soviets, and the 1980 Winter Olympic hockey tournament, while still exciting, would have had far less controversy. Also, movies such as WarGames, Red Dawn and Rocky IV might still have been made, but would have had a very different enemy.
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November 7, 1917 was a Wednesday. Baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. There was hardly any professional basketball. And, at the time, hockey season began in December, and the 1917-18 season would begin with a new league, the National Hockey League. But there were no scores on this historic day.
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