25 Dram Battle of Sardarapat

Sardarapat, fought in May 1918, was the engagement that prevented the complete elimination of the Armenian people in the immediate aftermath of the Genocide. The Ottoman advance was halted by a force of volunteers, militia, and remnants of the Russian Imperial Army's Caucasus units — a coalition assembled in days. Had the battle failed, there would have been no First Republic of Armenia, however brief its existence proved to be.

This 1994 issue arrived three years after independence from the Soviet Union, when Armenia was simultaneously fighting the Karabakh War and managing an economic collapse. The timing was pointed.