Celebrating the Republic of Armenia

Vahe H Apelian

The picture I posted is a composite from the front page of Aztag Daily special issue devoted to the 60th anniversary celebration of May 28 which we celebrated then as Independence Day. The other is from the first day cover of the stamp the postal service of Armenia issued celebrating May 28, as Armenia’s Independence Day. Arguably, May 28 and April 24 are the two days from our torturous history that will continue to remain entrenched in each and every one of us as long as we bear to be inheritors of the millennia old Armenian history.

 My mother had sent me this special issue, which I no longer have. I had left Lebanon two years earlier in 1976. My ties with the community understandably were much tighter. The special Aztag Daily issue is a huge spread. It measured 17.5 x 23 inches. Vehanoush Tekian, Vatche Proudian, and other young and upcoming have penned in this special issue.

May 28, 1978 happened to be a Sunday. Consequently, it is not far-fetched to imagine that the 60th anniversary celebration on that Sunday, became a special community event.  At least for the community that upheld and celebrated May 28 depicting it as the Armenian Independence Day. The community as a whole did not. 

From kindergarten to middle school, I was brought up in the Armenian community school system in Lebanon that celebrated May 28 as Armenian Independence Day and had the school closed on that day. After the middle school, I started attending the Armenian Evangelical College High School. The Armenian Evangelical community affiliated schools had May 28 as the schools’ picnic day. The Armenian Evangelical community schools were closed on that day and the schools organized outings to the country side. Consequently, for the next four years, I was off from a school day on May 28.

It was in college that the Armenian students from “this faction” school system and “that faction” school system got to get know each other and befriended. Surprisingly, coming from different Armenian school systems never factored in the friendships that ensued. It was in college, and I was visiting a classmate that I learned that not all Armenian schools closed on May 28, when I had assumed all did. It happened this way. I was surprised to hear my friend’s younger sister speaking of her homework for the next day that happened to be  May 28. I was astonished to hear that she had school on May 28. I asked her, isn’t her school closed tomorrow on May 28. “Why would the school close on May 28? “, she wondered, equally bewildered. She had absolutely no inkling of May 28. 

Who would have guessed then that 13 years, 3 months and 24 days later, on September 21, 1991, a referendum would be held in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia to determine whether to secede or not from the Soviet Union. The referendum followed a declaration of independence which was issued on August 23, 1990.

The following year, the Armenian postal service issued its first stamp celebrating the Independence of Armenia, as the ARF faction of the Armenian Diaspora had been celebrating all along, after the Soviet takeover of the short lived first republic from May 28, 1918 to December 2, 1920. The Armenian postal service on May 28, 1992 issued, what collectors of stamps call First Day Cover, of the Armenian stamp celebrating May 28 Independence Day. Incidentally I have almost complete sets of stamps issued by Republics of Armenia and Artsakh.

Per Armenian law, 12 days are declared as non-working holidays. Naturally May 28 is among them, but instead of calling it Independence Day, it is termed as Republic Day (Hanrabedoutian Or), to celebrate the establishment of the democratic Republic of Armenia in 1918. It is not clear to me when the designating May 28, as Republic Day came about. Some claim that it came about in 1992, the year the Armenian postal service issued the first May 28 stamp designating it as Independence Day. 

  I believe that designating May 28, as republic day is the crowning achievement of centuries of struggle of the Armenians to have their own sovereign, democratic, free and independent Republic. I believe the republic as the state institution gives substance and structure to independence, which otherwise will be vulnerable. The first republic came about mostly by the dedication of mostly men and women who adhered to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party. They are now upheld as the architects of the establishment of the first Republic of Armenia. Aram Manougian is accepted as the founder of the republic. ARF adopted the vision of the united Armenia in 1919, after the establishment of the Republic of Armenia.

That special issue of Aztag Daily announced on its front page that it is on on the occasion of the 60^th anniversary of the Republic of Armenia. During those years Armenian Independence Day was synonymous with free, independent Republic of Armenia as the short-lived first Armenian Republic had become, for all practical purposes, a captive nation within the Soviet Union. History moved at an unprecedented pace and on September 21, 1991, Soviet Socialist Republic voted for independence seceding from the Soviet Union.

 On may 28, I also join the hundreds of thousands of the citizens of Armenia who are officially exempt from work that day, and Armenians wold-wide, celebrating the promise of bringing forth a republic on May 28, 1918, after being stateless for the preceding 543 years, since the fall of the last Armenian kingdom, the Cilician kingdom, in 1375. 

"1919 May 28, Yerevan, Independence Day parade starting from Apovyan street, towards the Armenian Republic’s Parliament building, headed by a woman dressed in black, symbolizing the bloody past of Armenia, and behind her is a woman dressed in white, symbolizing the present day Armenia, the newly-independent Armenia. In their front, two men from Western Armenian and from Eastern Armenia are walking hand-in-hand, symbolizing the Unity of the Armenian Nation. The first and second automobiles are surrounded by men holding posters of the newly liberated Armenian Provinces (Moush, Sasoun, Dikranakerd, Sis etc.). On either side of the parade, we can see the refugees, the orphans and the Armenian military. Indeed, a very touching scene is immortalized." (courtesy Kegham Papazian)