AN ANCIENT HOMELAND, A YOUNG STATE: 34 YEARS ON

Anniversaries invite customary rites and speeches. In the case of Armenia, we wish they did too. Every anniversary of the independence of our beloved homeland—so ancient it feels eternal—makes us acutely aware of how impossibly the odds were stacked against us and yet, through thick and thin, our nation endures, among the oldest continuously present on the world map. 

These are our first 34 years of independence after six centuries of oppression and the short-lived independence of 1918-1920. If history teaches us anything, it is that we cannot take independence for granted and must cherish it as we did on that first September 21, 1991.