November 16, 1920: The Russian Civil War Ends

November 16, 1920: The Government of South Russia evacuates the Crimea, Russia's Black Sea peninsula, the last stronghold of the White Movement, bringing an end to the Russian Civil War, in victory for the Red Army.

Russia was struck by 2 revolutions in 1917: The February Revolution, which toppled the Russian Empire and Czar Nicholas II; and the October Revolution, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, which toppled the provisional government of President Alexander Kerensky, installing a Communist government led by Vladimir Lenin.

But the Bolsheviks' seizure of power was not universally accepted, and the country descended into a conflict which became a full-scale civil war by May 1918. The two largest combatants were the Red Army, seeking the maintenance of Lenin's far-left state; and the forces known as the White Movement and its White Army, led mainly by the right-leaning officers of the Russian Empire, united around the figure of Alexander Kolchak.

What many people, particularly in America, do not understand is that Socialists and Communists are not only not the same, but are opposed to each other. In the Russian Civil War, the leftist opposition to the Bolsheviks included the Party of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries-Internationalists, and the Makhnovshchina, Ukrainian anarchists. And then there were the Green Armies, local militias opposed to both the Reds and the Whites.

Thirteen foreign states, concerned with the establishment of a Communist state, launched what became known as the Allied Intervention against the Red Army. These states included the United States, the British Empire (and, through them, troops from Canada, Australia, India and South Africa), France, Japan, China, Greece and Poland.

But the Red Army was too entrenched. In 1919, the White Army launched several offensives, which failed. In December, General Kolchak was betrayed and detained by the chief of the Allied military mission in Siberia, Maurice Janin, who handed him over to the Bolsheviks. They executed him on February 7, 1920.

Although the Bolsheviks were victorious, the territorial extent of the Russian state had been reduced, for many non-Russian ethnic groups had used the disarray to push for national independence.

In March 1921, during a related war against Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed. Soon, the Red Army moved into the Baltic and Caucasus states. On December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics -- the Soviet Union -- was officially founded.

Lenin died in office in 1924. Janin returned to his native France, and lived until 1946. Kerensky lived in exile until 1970.

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November 16, 1920 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. Professional basketball barely existed. And the NHL season didn't start until December 22. So there were no scores on this historic day.

November 7, 1917: The Bolshevik Revolution

November 7, 1917: The Winter Palace in Petrograd is stormed by Bolshevik troops, and the Bolshevik Revolution is complete. It is also known as the October Revolution, since Russia was still using the Julian Calendar, and they thought it was October 25. The new national leader, Vladimir Lenin, switches the vast country to the Gregorian Calendar.

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.

July 17, 1918: The Execution of the Russian Imperial Family

July 17, 1918: The Bolshevik Revolution executes Czar Nicholas II and his entire immediate family, in Ekaterinburg, Russia, about 1,100 miles east of Moscow.

World War I went very badly for the Russian Empire, and the biggest reason was that the Czar took personal control of the Army. He proved to be completely inept as a commander, and by early 1917, both the Army and the home front were on the brink of collapse. The Army forced him to abdicate the throne on March 15.

A provisional government was set up, with Alexander Kerensky as President. But it could not feed the country, get it out of the war, or free the farmers from the owners of their land fast enough, and the people turned to others for hope.

Those others turned out to be the Bolsheviks, Communists led by Vladimir Lenin. He promised the people "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 November 7, 1917, the Czar's former residence, the Winter Palace in Petrograd, was stormed by Bolshevik troops, and the Bolshevik Revolution was complete. It is also known as the October Revolution, since Russia was still using the Julian Calendar, and they thought it was October 25. Lenin switched the vast country to the Gregorian Calendar.

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."

For Lenin was a monster. He kept his promise of peace, producing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that pulled Russia out of the war on March 3, 1918. Well, actually, he kept half of his promise of peace, because the Kerensky forces and the Czarist forces launched a civil war against the Bolsheviks. So there was still fighting. And there was no land, as the federal government took it all over. And there were precious little bread: People were still starving.

Lenin knew that, as long as the Czar was still alive, as long as any potential Czar was still alive, the Czarist forces would have someone to rally around. The House of Romanov -- the Czar, his wife, and their 5 children -- had been moved around, first by the provisional government, then by the Bolsheviks, but were still available.

Finally, Lenin made the decision that the Romanovs had to go, as a psychological blow to the Czarist forces. They were taken to Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg. And they were all shot:

* Czar Nicholas II, 50 years old.

* His wife, Czarina Alexandria, a.k.a. Alix, 46. And their children:

* Grand Duchess Olga, 22. 

* Grand Duchess Tatiana, 21. As nurses in the war, she and Olga had each fallen in love with at least 2 soldiers, but, despite having reached adulthood, neither was ever engaged to be married.

* Grand Duchess Maria, 19. Although renowned in her lifetime for her beauty, and having expressed a desire to have a large family of her own, she is not known to have had any romances, much less come close to being married.

* Grand Duchess Anastasia, 17. While there were impostors claiming to be her in the decades to come, the discovery of the Romanov mass grave led to DNA testing that proved that none of them escaped. And the rumor that Grigori Rasputin, assassinated by relatives of the Czar at the end of 1916, had seduced the Czarina and all 4 Grand Duchesses was completely false.

* Czarevich Alexei, 14, who stood to become Czar Alexander IV.

Had things worked out differently, and both he and his father had lived to be 70, Nicholas would have remained on the throne until 1938, and Alexei until 1974. But, Alexei having hemophilia, that would have been unlikely in any case. Any child of his would be a 3rd cousin of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, and could have still been on the Russian throne today.

Also shot: Alexei Trupp, 62, the Romanovs' lead servant; Ivan Kharitonov, 46, their family cook; Eugene Botkin, 53, their family doctor; Anna Demidova, 40, Alexandra's lady-in-waiting; and even a dog that belonged to Tatiana. Their executions may seem pointless, but the Bolsheviks wanted to make the point to any other Romanovs, or Romanov-affiliated people remaining: No one was safe.

Nicholas' brother, Grand Duke Michael, whom he had named as heir after his abdication, since Alexandra had convinced Nicholas that the strain of being Czar would be too much for Alexei's health, had already been executed, in Perm, on June 13. He was 39.

Alexandra's sister, and fellow granddaughter of Queen Victoria of Britain, Princess Elisabeth, widow of Nicholas' brother Grand Duke Sergei, one of the few popular members of the family due to her status as the founder of Russia's modern nursing system, revered as a living saint, was murdered on July 18, by being flung down a mineshaft. She was 53.

The execution -- really, the mass murder -- of the Romanovs was mentioned as one of the actions claimed by the Devil, played by Mick Jagger, in The Rolling Stones' 1968 song "Sympathy for the Devil." He said, "Anastasia screamed in vain." The phony story of the youngest daughter escaping, as told in the 1956 film Anastasia, starring Ingrid Bergman, made the reference familiar to listeners. Of course, by the time the song came out, the former capital of the Russian Empire had been named Leningrad since 1924, confusing people who wondered why Mick was singing about St. Petersburg, which they thought was in Florida.

The bodies were buried in a forest near Ipatiev House. They were found in 1979, and DNA testing identified them in 1998. On July 17, the 80th Anniversary of their execution, and 7 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, they were buried at Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, with their ancestors. The Church of the Blood was built on the site of Ipatiev House, and the Russian Orthodox Church has canonized the imperial couple and their 5 children as saints within their Church. This, despite Nicholas' terrible neglect of the people over whom he reigned. When you're a Martyr, it tops everything, and absolves all sins.

The Czarist forces, now demoralized, did collapse, and the White forces (the republicans supporting Kerensky) eventually fell to the Red forces (Lenin's Communists). The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, and would last until 1991.

Alexander Kerensky fled Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, living in Paris and later New York, and died in exile in New York in 1970. He outlived the Czar and his family, Lenin (1924), Leon Trotsky (1940) and Joseph Stalin (1953), and very nearly Nikita Khrushchev (1971).

After the executions, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna was the only surviving sibling of Nicholas. The current pretense to the Russian throne is through her descendants: She lived until 1960, and the meaningless title passed to her son, Prince Alexei, who lived in London until his death in 1981. His son, Prince Andrew Romanov, was born in London in 1923, moved to California, and became an artist. He died in 2021.

In 2022, the heir is Andrew's son, Prince Alexis Andreevich Romanov, 69, who runs a fiduciary services company in San Francisco. (It is interesting that so many would-be European monarchs got involved in banking.) He is married, to a woman named Zoey, but has had no children. So his heir is his half-brother, Prince Peter, 61, who runs a car business in San Francisco. No word on whether this wing of the Romanov family lives in the city's Russian Hill neighborhood.

Alexis & Zoey Romanoff

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July 17, 1918 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Giants and the Cincinnati Reds played a doubleheader at Redland Field in Cincinnati. (It was renamed Crosley Field in 1934.) The Reds won the 1st game, 2-1. The Giants won the 2nd game, 4-1.

* The Boston Red Sox swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Browns at Fenway Park in Boston, 7-0 and 4-0. Bullet Joe Bush pitched a 7-hit shutout, and Babe Ruth pitched a 4-hit shutout, in a game called after 5 innings due to darkness. Over the 2 games, Ruth went 3-for-6 with 2 RBIs.

* The Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-4 at National Park in Washington Park. (It was renamed Griffith Stadium in 1922.)

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Brooklyn Robins, 5-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. George Cutshaw drove in the winning run with a single in the bottom of the 11th inning. (The Brooklyn team became the Dodgers in 1911, then the Robins in 1914 in honor of manager Wilbert Robinson, and then the Dodgers again after he was fired after the 1931 season.)

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-1 at Weeghman Park in Chicago. (It was renamed Cubs Park in 1920, and Wrigley Field in 1926.) The game lasted 21 innings. Max Flack went 5-for-8 with an RBI for the Cubs, and Emil "Irish" Meusel went 0-for-9.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Boston Braves, 4-3 at Robison Field in St. Louis.

* The New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers were supposed to play at the Polo Grounds, but were rained out. It was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Tigers won the opener, 4-1. Ty Cobb went 0-for-2, but drew a walk and had an RBI on a groundout. He left the game with an injury, and didn't play in the nightcap, which the Yankees won, 3-2.

* And the Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics were supposed to play at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, but were also rained out. This one was also made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The White Sox won the 1st game, 3-1. The A's won the 2nd game, 4-3. Shoeless Joe Jackson didn't play in either game: He was working in a shipyard as World War I duty.

March 15, 1917: Czar Nicholas II Abdicates

March 15, 1917: Czar Nicholas II of Russia bows to the inevitable, and abdicates his throne after 23 years. This is the end of the dynasty of the House of Romanov, after 304 years.

World War I proved to be his undoing. By backing up Serbia in its conflict with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he had caused the German Empire to step in on Austria's side. Soon, Austria and Serbia became an overlooked side of the war, as the Eastern Front between Germany and Russia proved every bit as brutal as the Western Front between Germany and the alliance of Britain and France.

Nicholas, thinking himself smarter than he really was, took personal control of the Army, and was away from the capital, Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg), for much of 1915 and 1916. He proved a spectacularly bad commander, and his neglect of the home front left the people of the Russian Empire impoverished, in some cases starving.

The people hated him as a tyrant, and hated his wife the Czarina Alexandra as a German interloper. By February 23, 1917, a cold snap had made everything worse, and people began marching through the streets of the cities with red banners. Police shot at them, and riots resulted. And several military units were in mutiny. The "February Revolution" was underway.

The Czar's Cabinet told him that the only way to stop the rioting was to abdicate. He refused. On March 11, the 48-year-old Emperor suffered a coronary occlusion. By this point, the troops had stopped firing on the rioters, and let them run riot.

Finally, on March 15, his Generals told him that abdication was the only way to avoid either a civil war or complete conquest by the Germans. He got in touch with Alexandra, and said he would abdicate in favor of his only son, the 12-year-old Czarevitch Alexei. But Alexandra said the strain of reign would be too much for the hemophiliac Alexei. So Nicholas abdicated on his own behalf and Alexei's, and named his brother, Grand Duke Michael, as the next Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias.

But Michael was smarter than his brother: He refused to take the throne as Czar Michael II until the people were allowed to vote through a Constituent Assembly for either the continuance of the monarchy or a republic. A provisional government was installed, with Alexander Kerensky as President.

It wouldn't last long. And the House of Romanov wouldn't last much longer.

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March 15, 1917 was a Thursday. Baseball was in Spring Training. The Stanley Cup Finals would begin 2 days later, with the Seattle Metropolitans beating the Montreal Canadiens to become the 1st American team to win the Cup. Football was out of season. And professional basketball barely existed. So there were no scores on this historic day.