Welcome to History that doesn't suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I am very excited to have special guests join me today.

The illustrious Dr. Kat Brown, a colleague of mine from Utah Valley University, Kat,

care to say hello. Hello! Perfect, an excellent hello by the way. Thank you. To brag about you for just a second. Kat is, again, PhD.

Her work was completed at Bowling Green State. She focused on Russian and US policy history. So, they're alone. We know that you're brilliant.

Going on from there, you've been at UVU for a little while. 20 years. 20 years? Yeah! My goodness. Time flies when you're having fun. Exactly.

Yes. So, in that time, you've also been the chair of History and Political Science. And you are now the deputy provost of the university. Yes.

It is a very cool title. What on earth for those who are not in academia? What does it mean to be a provost? What should the listener pick up from that?

Sure. The provost is the chief academic officer for the university. So, he is the one, or they, you know, randomly, are the one who usually...

He is in our situation. Yes, in our situation. Good old Wayne. Good old Wayne.

Who oversees ultimately the policies that pertain to faculty and academics, oversees the faculty generally, and is really in charge of the quality of the programming of the university.

So, it's low stakes. It's just low stakes. Yeah. Low stakes. Yeah.

And then my deputy-ness comes from not just having the gold star, but also having the ability to sign documents that others in academic affairs can't sign if he's not around.

Right. So, you are the right-hand woman in the provost office. Yes.

Okay. But today, we get to bring it back to the classroom, so to speak. And get some rush on. So...

I'm looking forward to it. As am I. So, to kind of fill everybody in, our last episode gave us a quick overview of World War I from its beginning up to the end of 1916, kind of teasing 1917, queuing up US entry.

That was super fast, though. I'm very happy with the episode, but I realized, oh, there were sentences that I wrote and thought to myself, oh, that could be a whole episode.

But no, contain myself. This is US history. Can't go there. All that said, the Eastern Front, I feel like you could help us understand Russia so much more.

So, I'm really grateful to have your expertise here today to flesh out some things. Happy to do it.

All right. Well, let's go ahead and get to it.

19th century, Russia. Going into World War I. As Winston Churchill later say that he called Russia, I'm sure you remember this quote.

It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a mystery, inside in an igna, something bright. We got mystery in an igna.

I think that is probably a decent summation of how much of those people know about 19th century into 20th century Russia.

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