Welcome to Russian History Retold, episode 216, an interview with the author of Before

Evil, young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim, Brandon Goshe.

Our guest today is Brandon Goshe, who completed his doctorate in modern history at Ford

University in New York City in 2016. He's an adjunct professor of history for Ford

University and the director of global education at the Derryfield School. You can follow him

on Twitter at bkunderline.gov or follow him on his web page at beforeevil.com. Brandon,

welcome to the show.

Mark, thank you so much for having me on. I've spent a lot of time listening to all the great

episodes that you've done and it's a real pleasure to speak with you.

Well, thank you. So, Brandon, can you tell us what it inspired you to write before evil?

So, it's a hard question in this sense that it comes down to a question for our listeners,

which is, should we humanize the inhumane as a historian who is passionate about history

as a means of explaining things that part of the historian's task is for him or her to approach

something that has happened, whether it be extraordinary or whether it be disturbing and

try to engage it as something that is explicable. And that has led me to focus on the story of

despots, the story of tyrannical dictators, people whose guilt is total and cannot be excused,

but who were human beings. I became interested in the humanity of inhumanity.

That started with my dissertation, which focused at Fordham on the history of US, North Korean

relations. And throughout the process of doing that dissertation, I was able to go to North Korea

and I saw the the the bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. And that's a whole another story

for a whole other time, Mark, but I'll say this. I seeing those bodies. I wrestled with the notion

that these were actual people who did horrific things to their fellow man and woman. And I thought

...