#92 The Armenian Genocide w/ Ronald Suny
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2018
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Armenian genocide was one of the most tragic events in the 20th century. The Ottoman government's deliberate attempt to purge Armenians during World War I led to the elimination of approximately 1.5 million of the 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire just a few years earlier. While some families were able to escape the country and emigrate elsewhere, approximately eight hundred thousand Armenians were put to death by the Ottoman government and its allies within the Empire. Yet despite overwhelming evidence of the scale and purpose of this event, many governments, including the United States, have yet to officially recognize the Armenian genocide.
In this episode of The Road to Now we speak with Ronald Suny, who is one of the world's foremost experts on the history of the Armenian genocide. Ron explains the process that led the Ottoman government to turn on its Armenian subjects and the methods it used to carry out this atrocity. He also explains why, in spite of the evidence, recognizing this as genocide remains a political hotspot both internationally and within modern Turkey, and why it is important to remember tragedies even when doing so makes us uncomfortable.
Dr. Ronald Grigor Suny is the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Emeritus Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago, and Senior Researcher at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He is the author of numerous books, including "They Can Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else:" A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton University Press, 2015).
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. For more on this and all other episodes of our podcast, visit our website: www.TheRoadToNow.com.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Osiris. |
| 0:03.1 | This podcast is in the Loop, the Legion of Osiris Podcasts. |
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| 0:08.8 | Osiris is a community of great music and culture podcasts. |
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| 0:18.2 | Osiris is partnered with Relix Magazine at relics.com. |
| 0:35.4 | I'm Bob Crawford and am joined as always by Dr. Ben Sawyer. Ben, you had a wonderful guest that you got to speak with last week. Ron Sunni. Yes, Ron Sunni from the University of Michigan. Also, Professor Emeritus of Political Science from University of Chicago. So he is a |
| 0:56.1 | professor of history and once was in a political science department. And I think that speaks to |
| 1:00.8 | his, the depth of his knowledge and his capability. Ron is someone that I've known in a long time. |
| 1:07.5 | Actually, when I first went to graduate school at Michigan State, I began |
| 1:11.1 | going to a workshop in Russian studies and Soviet studies at the University of Michigan. If you know |
| 1:15.8 | anything about Soviet history, Iran is one of the giants in that field. And for someone who has his |
| 1:20.9 | accomplishments, someone who has his credentials, he is the warmest, one of the warmest kindest people you'll |
| 1:26.5 | meet. And after all those |
| 1:27.8 | years of him showing me all that hospitality at Michigan inviting me down to Ann Arbor to these |
| 1:32.1 | workshops, I finally got a chance to show him around Nashville because he came down to give the |
| 1:37.4 | keynote speech at our genocide and Holocaust conference, which was incredible. And so it was really |
| 1:42.5 | one of those things where not only was it a great time to spend, |
| 1:45.5 | you know, an afternoon with the scholar, it was also nice to repay, |
| 1:49.3 | good that was done to me with no expectation of return. |
| 1:52.7 | So you spoke with Ron about the Armenian genocide, correct? |
| 1:57.0 | Right. |
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