The sixteenth installment of the Reconsidering Russia podcast series features Dr. Ronald Grigor Suny, William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

He is the author of numerous books on Russia, Armenia, Georgia and the former Soviet region, including The Baku Commune, The Making of the Georgian Nation, Looking Toward Ararat, The Soviet Experiment, and the forthcoming Red Flag Unfurled, to name a few. He was also the MA advisor for the host of this podcast at the University of Michigan.

In this interview, Dr. Suny discusses the history of his grandfather – the composer Grikor Suni – and his experience of the Russian Revolution, the Revolution in Transcaucasia, Stepan Shahumyan and the Baku Commune, and the issue of class and nationality in the Russian Revolution. This interview also includes discussions of Dr. Suny’s work with Leopold Haimson at Columbia, his close friendship with Moshe Lewin, Revisionism vs. Authoritarianism in Soviet and Russian historiography, and the recent push for “de-communization” in Armenia.