Parts 1-9:
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https://caucus99percent.com/content/democratic-party-my-third-and-curren...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/democratic-party-my-third-and-curren...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/democratic-party-my-third-and-curren...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/democratic-party-my-third-and-curren...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/democratic-party-my-third-and-curren...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/democratic-party-my-third-and-curren...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/democratic-party-my-third-and-curren...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/democratic-party-my-third-and-curren...

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Look-A-Likes George Cinq and Tsar Nicky Two Sticks, grandsons of Queen Victoria, with their respective presumptive heirs (neither of whom was to die a monarch)

We last left Franklin Delano Roosevelt after the 1920 Cox-Roosevelt Presidential ticket that FDR put together secured the record for losing the popular vote in a Presidential election by a landslide. (According to wikipedia, that record still stands.) Before getting to FDR's 1920s, though, we'll take a backward glance at the World War I era, specifically, the Russian Revolutions and the Great Migration within the US. First, let me clarify:

Although this sentence is the only part of this essay that I drafted with Labor Day in mind, I'm not mad that I finished this Part 10 today. However, I do oppose v.a.r., because (a) violence is almost never the right answer; and (b) I believe that v.a.r. today would be futile loss of life. That said, I am in absolute solidarity with all people, past, present and future, anywhere in the world who need(ed) to work in order to have basic necessities. https://caucus99percent.com/content/why-us-celebrates-labor-day-september ; https://caucus99percent.com/content/may-1-holy-day-obligation-90-buy-not... Ennnnywaaaayyyy....

The Russian Revolutions of March and November 1917 finally succeeded when Russian troops returning from World War I joined the uprisings. (That alone explains a great deal about our own military, IMO, but that is another story.) In my view, the final event of the Russian Revolutions occurred on July 17, 1918. At about 1 a.m. that morning, those holding them captive awakened Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, his five children, the family doctor and housekeepers whom the Russian royals had been allowed to keep with them.. The prisoners were told to dress and prepare to flee.

After the group complied, the group was taken to the basement of the home of a Russian historian, where they had been imprisoned for months. They were arranged as if for a routine portrait. Being ill, the Tsarina was given a chair, whereupon the Tsar requested and received one for his son, a hemophiliac. After the photograph that appears below this essay was taken, a firing squad entered and shot the Tsar, his family and their retainers. The Tsar's children were also stabbed, bludgeoned and then shot a second time ¹

Under any circumstances, the Russian revolutions and the executions would have sent shock waves through the minds of the rich and powerful around the world, especially the West. This was all the more so because Nicholas II and/or his wife were related, sometimes quite closely and in more than one way, to royalty of Denmark, Greece, Great Britain, Germany, Norway, etc. None of the relatives of the Imperial couple, however, provided refuge to the Russian royals.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George had joined King George V of England, the Tsar's first cousin and doppelganger and the granddad of Queen Elizabeth II, in offering asylum, but withdrew the offer when they realized how strong anti-royal sentiment already was in England. They feared the presence of the Russian royals could transform that sentiment into action. The King, often described as having been "very close" to Nicholas, did send a lovely note to his obviously-doomed cousin, though. That's how "shock wavey" the whole "uprisings by the poor against the rich ruling class" thing was outside Russia. (It's good to be the king, except when really, really reeks to be the king.)

The Tsar's household was executed only eleven years and a few months prior to Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. Black Tuesday, of course, was the date of the stock market crash that triggered the oxymoronically-named Great Depression. In turn, widespread, bold securities fraud had set up the stock market for a crash. False reports of wealthy Wall Streeters leaping to their death from the windows of their offices, rather than face the consequences of their actions, must have seemed like confirmation.

During the Depression, I believe that it had to have occurred to both the US government and the US wealthy that the US might soon see its own version of the Russian revolutions. And, of course, after March, 1933, New Deal architect-in-chief FDR was both "U.S. government" and "U.S. wealthy" (as was another member of Roosevelt's team, Joseph Kennedy, Sr. and, no doubt, any number of FDR's other peers whom FDR had brought into his administration). See where I'm likely to be going with this when I get to the economic policies of patrician politician FDR after 1917-18?

Meanwhile, on the "New World" side of the planet, the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to other parts of the nation, primarily cities, began somewhere between 1915 and 1917 (accounts vary). The industrial jobs created by World War I was one of the incentives as were, of course, segregation, lack of prospects in the South, inability to vote and other forms of racism. (The Great War, the Great Depression and the Great Migration: Apparently, naming events back then lacked Great Variety.) The political/demographic ramifications of the Great Migration are, I believe, necessary to understanding FDR's interactions with African Americans during his Presidency, which were, at the very least, cynical.

Inasmuch as I've touched on the Great Migration in prior essays, I merely mention it here, although I may review it when I write about FDR's Presidency and concomitant leadership of the Democratic Party. Part 11, however, will return to FDR's life.

The photograph described in the fourth paragraph, above

The same basement, at some point after the assassinations
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¹The first episode of the Netflix series The Last Czar repeatedly mentioned failure to produce a male heir as one of the ways in which Nicholas failed as a despot monarch, portrayed in the series as hapless. I thought, "The last thing that desperate Russians may have been saying then was, "I hate the Tsar and Tsarina for their failure to produce a male heir to ensure continued reign by their Romanov line!" Reading about the especially brutal deaths of the Romanov children seems like confirmation.

Below, to be "fair and balanced," is a mix of Russian imperial songs, followed by a mix of Russian songs that are, um, not imperial. (Neither is likely to make you grab your dancing shoes, but maybe that's just me.)