Levon Shant & Ruben Ter Minasian Pin

Memorial Pinback Button: Shant & Rouben (1951)

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This celluloid pinback button, issued in 1951, bears the Armenian tricolor and twin oval portraits of Levon Shant (b. 1869) and Ruben Ter-Minasian (labeled 1880). Both men were towering figures of the ARF tradition.

Levon Shant was as writer, educator, and longtime ideologue of the movement, and Ruben Ter Minasian as fedayi commander turned Defense Minister of the First Republic. The 1951 date, inscribed on the center of the pin, marks the year both men died.

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It is worth noting that Ruben's actual birth year was 1882, not 1880 as printed on the button. Whether this reflects a manufacturing error or an earlier, uncorrected biographical tradition circulating in the diaspora press at the time is unclear.