So there I was, minding my own business, when, for some inexplicable reason, I found myself idly thinking about the fall of the Romanov dynasty. For the life of me, I can’t tell you what led me to reflect on the moment when Nicholas II lost control over a once-burgeoning empire due to widespread unrest that he himself had a hand in shaping. Maybe it’s the weather? Maybe those barometric pressure changes can lead to more than just headaches?
But it’s kind of weird, right? Why would my mind make me recall that the Russian Revolution was largely ignited by a devastating economic crisis, social inequality, and the ruling class being aggressively out of touch with the suffering masses? It just makes no sense for me to be thinking of a bunch ruling-class assholes enriching themselves through, if not illegal, then definitely immoral ways, while everyone else has to buy tacos on payment plans. They didn’t even have tacos in Russia back then. Is my brain broken? Am I having a stroke?
Please, tell me what specialist I should see about not being able to let go of the memory from high school history class about a starving and increasingly angry nation having to watch their leader attend a military showcase meant to exalt him. I need help. I keep fighting the urge to stop people in the street and yell at them that while the Russian people were eating the memory of bread, Nicholas II was busy checking out his reflection in the shiny buttons on the uniforms of his troops. I mean, what does that have to do with the world we live in now?
I’m so scared. Please hold me.
The mysteries of my mind don’t end there. I fear we will never learn why my head movies are constantly playing out scenes of the Duma, Russia’s parliament, telling the tsar, “Sir, the country is imploding,” and Nicholas replying, “I would like to dissolve the Duma.”
Someone please resurrect Robert Stack because I have an unsolved mystery for him.
And while he’s at it, maybe Stack will have time to investigate why I’m reflecting on the fact that the Romanov court was controlled by a deeply creepy guy who looks like he gives angels diarrhea whenever he smiles. Again, it beats me why my consciousness is flooded with these facts. Everything has a cause, but I just can’t pinpoint the origin of my contemplations about a behind-the-scenes takeover of the executive branch. Is this what Shakespeare meant when he wrote, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”?
I don’t know. Same as I don’t know why I want to write on the walls that the pissed-off masses eventually had enough, stormed the Romanov Winter Palace, and overthrew the government. Maybe I’ve had too much coffee? Or not enough coffee? Caffeine is definitely involved somehow. What other brain-altering chemical would also make one recollect that throughout the shit show that was the end-stage of imperial rule in Russia, the Romanovs believed with all their hearts that most of the people still loved them?
It’s gotta be the coffee. No other explanation makes sense!