The massive demonstrations that took place in Soviet Armenia in February 1988 did not initially threaten the established Diasporan “elite settlement.” By then, the Dashnaks were not as keen as before on pushing for Eastern Armenia’s immediate secession from the Soviet Union, and it was, therefore, not against the spirit of the “elite settlement” to submit a joint demand for the unification of Mountainous Karabakh with Soviet Armenia and to forcefully condemn the massacre of Armenians by Azerbaijanis in Sumgait.

Faced with the Kremlin’s intransigence, however, the Karabakh movement in Yerevan gradually became more independentist, and this gradual shift generated a deep interest among the politically mobilized public in Armenia about the history of the 1918-1920 republic and its symbols. This curiosity regarding the 1918-1920 period was also initially in line with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s calls to study the blank pages of history – topics, which Soviet historians had previously been ordered to avoid.

The anniversary of May 28 was first marked in Yerevan in 1988, alongside the rallies demanding the annexation of Mountainous Karabakh. Movses Gorgisian is now credited for being the first to raise the tricolor flag of 1918-1920 that day in Theater (now, Liberty) Square in downtown Yerevan. Gorgisian, however, was a member of the relatively small independentist wing of the Karabakh Movement, and the Karabakh Committee, which then led the movement’s mainstream, stayed away from this particular celebration.

However, as it became clear to the masses that the Kremlin leadership was adamantly opposed to making internal border changes within the Soviet Union, calls for Armenia’s independence and the raising of the tricolor flag became more and more common during rallies held in the summer and fall of 1988.

Thereafter, the Communist Party’s Central Committee in Yerevan had a change of heart, sometime around mid-May 1989, and asked its Institute of Party History/Armenian branch of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Armenian Academy of Sciences, and Yerevan State University to co-organize a conference on the First Republic of Armenia in 1918-1920 on May 26, 1989. This hastily convened gathering formally recommended to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Soviet Armenia to declare May 28 as the Day of the Re-Establishment of Armenian Statehood (Haykakan petakanutyan verakangnman or) and designate the tricolor flag as an Armenian national symbol. These recommendations were implemented immediately,[15] and Communist Party newspapers – Khorhrdayin Hayastan, Erekoyan Erevan, Avangard and others – carried a number of lengthy articles about the history of the 1918-1920 republic in their issues published between May 26 and 28, 1989. Even the newspaper Pravda in Moscow printed a short report on May 29 about the popular festivities that had taken place in Yerevan the previous day.

Thus, for over a year, Soviet Armenia would have both an official state flag and the tricolor flag as a separate national symbol. A year later, this duality was brought to an end, however, when the Communists ended up as the minority in Soviet Armenia’s legislature in August 1990. The new, reformist majority in the Supreme Soviet scrapped the Soviet-era flag and reinstated the tricolor as Armenia’s state flag on August 24, 1990 – after a gap of almost seven decades.

The re-adoption of the other symbols of the 1918-1920 republic continued in the next couple of years as Armenia’s pursuit of sovereignty and political independence deepened and ultimately acquired international recognition. Mer Hayrenik was reinstated as the national anthem on July 1,1991, while the old coat of arms was revived soon after the independence referendum of September 21, 1991.

Today, Armenia’s official holiday list includes both May 28 (to mark independence in 1918) and September 21 (to celebrate the referendum for independence in 1991). The tricolor flag, Mer Hayrenik and the reinstated coat of arms are wholeheartedly accepted by the overwhelming majority, not to say all, of the country’s population. Few people, mostly members of the dwindling and ageing Communist Party, do continue to hoist in public any of the symbols of Soviet Armenia.

The situation in the Diaspora remains slightly different, and that’s why the question posed at the beginning of this article – about what response the presidential decree to mark the centennial of May 28 next year will get outside Armenia – remains fascinating. For Dashnaks in the Diaspora, the about face by the outgoing Soviet Armenian regime in 1989 regarding the anniversary of May 28 and the symbols of the 1918-1920 republic was a vindication of what their party had struggled for throughout 70 years. It was proof that they had been right all along. Today, they are proud that post-Soviet, independent Armenia continues to honor the proclamation of independence on May 28, 1918 and has this particular flag, this particular national anthem, and this particular coat of arms, all symbols which the Dashnak party had preserved and held high for seven decades, ignoring all kinds of criticism from other Armenian circles in the Diaspora. They cannot imagine an independent Armenia close to their heart not having this particular flag, this particular national anthem, and this particular coat of arms.

For the anti-Dashnak “coalition,” however, the same about face in Yerevan was initially a bitter pill to swallow. It took some months for its leaders to get accustomed to the new reality and then explain to their followers that this sudden interest in Soviet Armenia toward the symbols of the 1918-1920 republic was not a defeat of their 70 year-long ideological struggle, that Armenia was not going to be taken over fully by their Dashnak rivals, and that they would still be welcome there under the revived state symbols of 1918-1920.