Tainted Communism
The main issue that tainted Communism in Russia was Lenin. Without his leadership, the gang we came to know as the Bolsheviks wouldn't have been near as successful. The main POD's preventing his rise to prominence were as you said, no bloody disasters for the Russian Army in WWI, no distracted tsars influenced by Rasputin, and/or mostly Kerensky keeping the SR's, Bukharinites, and Mensheviks onside with a semi-functional Provisional Government that doesn't mismanage the economy.
What the Bolsheviks offered was a clear path to power and simple slogan, "Peace and Bread" after years of feckless debating-society democrats, clueless autocrats who wanted to believe 1905 hadn't sunk the credibility of tsarist government, and sharp operators letting Russia drift off the road and over a cliff, hundreds of thousands dead and wounded, a broke treasury, famine and other crap going on.
FWIW there were a lot of democratically-minded folks in the Russian Revolution, who outnumbered the Bolsheviks 8:1 and figured Lenin & Co could be dealt with later. They didn't realize elections weren't going to matter afterward as Lenin had no intentions of sharing power or pulling a Cincinnatus after the state of emergency was over.
Long story shorter, there's been several explorations on AH of a Russia that didn't go Communist.
They tend to be of the "Russia becomes Nazi Germany with Slavophilia vs Nazism as the guiding philosophy" in a White victory post Russian Civil War. I have severe trouble with that b/c the White generals were largely inept militarily and politically and about as charismatic as moldy borscht.
I'd prefer a Russian social-democratic renewal that got Russia prosperous, positively engaged economically and politically with the world and avoiding the brutality and want of Stalinist state socialism. No Holodomor or purges killing millions of people, but that's me. It's your story to tell and what POD's to sell as to why/how it gets there