back happy to have you back it's hard to compress a lot of history in a short time period we're doing our best so we were finishing the other segment then i asked you to try and estimate the deaths you think it's roughly and of all ethnic groups and i would think it would be in the two to two and a half million range roughly one point two to one point five million armenians maybe two to three hundred thousand syrians it depends the some of the numbers have been increasingly yeah it just depends on greek some of the some estimates are now up to a million over the process nine hundred fourteen and actually into the  twenty s right for various reasons greeks were actually targeted even after in the new in the turkish republic through xterm retore labor battalions and other things so there's a whole depending on where you think is the years you get more you know there's a second phase of the army in genocide people would argue in one thousand nine hundred twenty one when some armenians tried to return and were further massacred and so forth so there's the end of the yeah end of the war  well turkey to do it create an opportunity because it did change the government and obviously turkey was defeated so there was there were occupation there were there was a change in government but with the national the rise of the national standard come auditor a lot of the you know the the hope that people had ok now we can go back to our homes now they'll be a stable government that you know has to respect our rights because it is committed genocide really faded pretty quickly  and so depending on where means where they were subjected to the same process of massacre greeks particularly in the aftermath because the greek army was actually present in in a minor in on  formally ottoman empire territory in smyrna and other places so that became a whole set of other issues in targeting of greeks as well so yes so it sort of continued for you know in different ways  after the end of world war one and we had a peace conference as in we know the american failures and whatever league of nations what do you think people knew at that time of the enemy and they knew a great deal and in fact they knew a great deal in real time as events were unfolding i mean genocide was hundreds of thousands at least of armenians had been killed was common knowledge around the world while it was happening and so there was no lack of knowledge there may have  been not full knowledge of course or full understanding of why things were happening or that all the ways in which they were happening but that that terrible things were happening on a scale pretty much unheard of at that time was common knowledge around the world it subsequently became less common knowledge right so this past that so if into i mean people were not discussing it ten years later  and in a great many cities at the same time in other words it was being discussed by scholars by this by that but it was dying down right well was over turkey had changed right over there was some of that happened blah blah blah y history always moves on and of course there were there were people who were interested in not having it discussed anymore primarily the government of turkey and those who supported it how much do you think i don't know i mean this is a this is something that's often discussed actually nowadays if if is the is the armenian genocide the only thing that unifies the armenian  d if somehow the i mean genocide in the issues around it wherever resolved whatever that might mean would the armenian community no longer have any common unifying force i don't particularly subscribe to that  belief and i think probably the armenian genocide has produced as much division in the armenian community as it's produced unity i do suppose that there is a general sense of agreement that that in the armenian community that they but we were and i would say two other things one is i think maybe more than the genocide as a memory the need to rebuild in order to survive as communities i think was a really important unifying factor so armenians were trying to rebuild some sort of cohesive you know communities at the local level and then also insist usually does all this was destroyed and i don't think that was initially just an ideological nationalist psychologically families were fragmented and many you know hard to think of an armenian family with everybody who was born into it surviving which is unfortunately not unique armenians and so i think that that was one part of it  and i think you know going forward i mean certainly indignation at denial and the sense of injustice does you know does motivate i think in some sense political action by armenians but i think mark is right there in some ways it could almost it also has a has a divisive impact which is not actually a bad thing armenians can think differently about different issues or it's very vibrant but i really think it's more a positive sense of trying to have a community and trying to survive that really characterized i think actually in a way the notion that the only thing that unifies the armenian community being the armenian genocide is a notion that's been themselves perhaps that's understandable but no i don't i wouldn't think it would be the cause but it could be one of the most important factors unifying i means in australia with you know the dispersal of people so let's move on to the republic of armenia that wonderful socialist country that was part of moon soviet republics but that was three or write it well i mean the the first armenian republic which was an independent independent republic that emerged at the end of world war one that was in vision certainly from you know w wilson's respective and so forth as as a place where armenians could recover you know that there was a necessary if there are means we're going to be a viable people in the future there need to be some kind of safe haven that could could  function and you see this with other you know obviously you know israel that's one part of the conception of israel and certain other states as well so so for two and a half years essentially the republic survived to develop i mean depending on who you which colors you talk to some pretty impressive democratic institutions you know women had a role i mean there are a lot of advances but with the nationalist movement in turkey and the fact that that republic being very rough half of it was on turkish quote unquote turkish territory that had really been our you know a lot of intervening in territory army and habited that really was unacceptable to the nationalist movement that invaded militarily and you know continued to take that territory back until they got most of it actually got a little extra part and had been part of the russian empire before and without the you know by now the end  there was no international support you know the idea of sovereign sovereign sovereign state and you know territorial integrity was not not you know certainly supported in the case of the armenians the rest of armenia ended up going into the soviet peoples in certain areas there because of the marxist purity through the quins or whatever your call it i mean they do to a lot of peoples but it seems to me i never heard anything of them denigrating or you know that the history of soviet armenia is complicated and unfortunately not well written at yeah and it's largely just kind of skipped over seventy than they were part of the soviet union and then that we were independent again but throughout those seventy years a lot of amazing accomplishments came out of the soviet republic of armenia but also of course especially in under stalin there were huge losses again so that many of the people in soviet armenia were doubly or triply traumatized first by the the genocide and then by the last of the first republic and then by the stalinist purges in the thirty's and then you could add in world war two as well and of course many many armenians served in the soviet army during world war two so but when you get to the sixty's and seventy's that's sort of a golden age for first soviet armenia when when a lot of soviet armenian culture actually has an opportunity to flourish and the grip of moscow was not quite so and there was certainly not a threat to moscow in any way it was no secret armenian revolutionary army in the mountains i mean they were and they were allowed very moderate expressions of national identity and in the sixty's they were allowed soviet armenians were allowed to build a genocide memorial overcoming initial resistance to do so because the soviets didn't want to antagonize turkey either and they didn't want and do expressions of national identity but they think they figured out that it was better to part of the history that was sort of kept under wraps for most of the seventy years of soviet rule but never went away and we cannot actually that that kind of nesting of different ethnic groups within other ethnic groups was very much a an intentional policy of the soviet union from the one nine hundred twenty s on so it created these complicated dependencies where small minority groups are dependent on moscow bigger groups were worried that those small groups would be supported by moscow so they had to be loyal to moscow and so in and so it created this sort of constant sense of insecurity among non russian russian peoples i think especially along a long border and some would argue really that that approach is still in in fashion you know for the russian empire or for the russian republic at literary or clearly free but clearly under the importance of russia or and but they're allowed to sort of go their own way in general about worrying about foreign policies i mean culturally it's complicated actually about five years ago armenia wanted to join the european union customs union and essentially was in the process of doing that and then by all accounts the putin regime said no and that was it they created their own you know sort of economic union and so there's a lot of tensions over the dishes and questions about even internally questions about the level of control of russia over the i mean government which may be changing because of the different yeah vast numbers or it's hard to judge that's numbers let's just say that there are constant trickling around sort of thing yes and of course in the world of social media we're just in general are always going to be people out there what's more concerning i think for me probably for henry this is something we both spent a number of years trying to work on is when the denial finds its way into forums that would normally be viewed as scholarship whether it's academic journals conferences books that are are or could be seen to be truly scholarly in nature and that's and right away why are they getting in there the people in charge of the publications trying not to be  beyond this is been part of the campaign by the government of turkey and it's a lot you know civil society and other allies inside turkey now inside turkey i mean it's really  an effort to create an academic base for denial and legitimacy you've seen the same thing in in different ways although not necessarily state sponsored programs relative the holocaust but very well page in the duke university newspaper back in the eighty's you know those kinds of things where it create you push the right way you find a way to get yourself seen as legitimate and i think that that's why a scholarly areas are if germany instead of accepting the holocaust denied the influence that germany as a powerful state and as a strong ally of the united states what it it and the porters the kind of influence they could generate to leverage that into getting articles published in legitimate journals to getting books published by legitimate presses that called into question maybe they see that doubt as a legitimate part of the discussion so that you can't have the discussion in fact without discussing the doubt we see that in the piper's movements in this country right not necessarily with genocide al some with that but but just with ideas that they want to partially pollute yours it's just so people are there's an audience waiting to buy that it's an extremely successful strategy in many different u nfortunate undertakings that people are susceptible to having created and we are very we cherish in this country the idea that everything has two sides and that both sides are all sides need to be given their fair hearing for me up but you know course all sides don't always have facts to germany deserves a lot of credit for what they've done and  reading little things and some of the stuff i see is there going back to pre war you know and this is one of the dangers of denial where it's seen as illegitimate is it maybe under the right political circumstances it won't have a huge impact it won't find its way in k through twelve schools and so but when there are political shifts suddenly that that denial can get support to germans and now we're seeing sort of the fruits of that because that's been sort of allowed to be there it's become legitimate and it's very disturbing it's very disturbing and i think that's why we looking at denial see it as something that really  it's gone from a subject that was of course note about but which did not have a large body of scholarly writing writing a part of it to one that has a very  robust scholarly literature and is discussed by many scholars not necessarily just specialists on the armenian genocide but within the larger field of genocide studies which and i think the  availability of documents of other kinds of primary evidences is now very clearly you know there's no question there's an immense amount of primary evidence of the genocide and that that's been researched more and more effectively i mean there are there are you know yearly new important things being shown discovered confirmed and so forth so it you know on the on the level of science the historic historical science no question of the army and genocide and i think we're seeing now a new generation of scholars who are starting to look at some of the more complicated questions where you've seen that in holocaust research i think you're starting to see that in rwanda as well the sort of subtle or a question that go beyond what happened  and why to you know what what was the impact how did it vary in different places and so forth and i think that's that's important and beyond the obligation to prove what happened right which was understandably that the first generation of scholars had to deal with first they had to show that this actually happened in fact but that being really not not a serious issue although denial very much gone which is essentially the rest with their i mean genocide even though a lot has been done to interview survivors more so more so with the holocaust survivors than with armenian genocide survivors but a lot was done there as well but actually having the physical presence among us yes of people who survived takes away something of the reality of it and when they're gone they're gone and then there's no replacing that  away something's not right so yeah i had a whole slew of relatives lost in the holocaust i just didn't know them because right great uncle max came from poland but he left this is an eight hundred eighty he left behind those genius get wiped out because there's something special in some people that you know who knows it's like i remember reading about the library of alexandria writes in history what a wonderful place it seemed to have been was human history there what you're saying actually is interesting so i think it really connects with if you're familiar with raphael lemkin who is a polish jew who just roughly fifty members of his family in the holocaust and then coined the term genocide and originally was before the holocaust had engaged i mean genocide and so forth and was very concerned about it and the kind of thing you're talking was exactly the dimension of genocide that he emphasized obviously the death is  is basically i mean genesis and the question this is normal person why would you do that you know what you know and i couldn't answer that i couldn't answer them but i chose not to you do something about death i said well it's about life so about death you're calling it that i'm calling it life anyway yeah we thank you thank you again we will