Armenia’s Independence Day is 21 September, celebrating the 1991 referendum and declaration of independence.
On 21 September 1991, Armenian voters overwhelmingly approved independence from the Soviet Union in a referendum. The Armenian Supreme Soviet had adopted a declaration of independence on 23 August, and the referendum followed the failed August coup in Moscow and the accelerating dissolution of the USSR.
Armenia’s modern independence restored state sovereignty after the country had been a Soviet republic since 1920. Levon Ter-Petrosyan became the first president of the independent Republic of Armenia after elections in 1991.
The holiday is separate from Republic Day on 28 May, which commemorates the establishment of the short-lived First Republic of Armenia in 1918. That earlier republic existed before Soviet rule and is remembered as a different chapter of Armenian statehood.