The Russian Coat of Arms

[Russian The Two-headed Eagle serves as the Russian Coat of Arms since 15th century, when it was borrowed by Tsar Ivan the III from Bysanthy. The original color was black, as one can still see it on the Albanian State Flag. With the expansion of the Russian Empire the Eagle was decorated with shields of conquered countries and regions. After the Socialist Revolution in 1917 such a coat was abandoned. Since 1991, when Russia restored its independence, a number of attempts to adopt the official coat of arms were undertaken. In 1994 Russian Duma approved the coat featuring the Two-headed Eagle as the official one. The shield of St.George The Victor serves as the Moscow city shield since 15th century even without interruption and is added to the coat of arms as a symbol of the capital.

[Moscow From A.A. Zimin ,"Vityaz na rasputie" ("Warrior at the crossroads"), Moscow, 1990, kindly suggested by Yury O. Chernoff: St. George the Victor was originally a personal Coat of Arms of Yury (George) Dmitriyevich, second survived son of Dmitry the Don, due to St. George being his patron saint (O.S.: Russian name Yury originates from Scandinavian variant of the name George - Goeran, spells [Yu:ran]). Irony of history is in that for most of his life, Yury Dmitriyevich was a Prince of Galich and Zvenigorod, not a Grand Duke of Moscow. He gained Grand Duke of Moscow crown after a terrible war shortly before his death at 1434, and was succeeded by his major rival, his nephew Vassily the Blind. Strangely, Vassily inherited his rival's Coat of Arms.

Please note : untill now the Russian Duma fails to accept both law projects on Coat of Arms and Anthem. Nevertheless, it's allowed to use the Two-headed Eagle image for Coat of Arms and Glinka's "Patriotic Song" for the Anthem

Russian Flags

(taken partially from the Flags of the World server.)

The official state flag

[White Blue Red Russian flag]


Origin of white blue red colors

The white-blue-red is based on the coat of arms of the duchy of Moscow, which is red with Saint George, wearing white armor and a blue cape, riding a white horse, holding a blue shield, defeating the dragon.

From Carl Alexander von Volborth's book on heraldry there's this picture about the coat of arms of Moscow :

[Moscow Coat of Arms] The caption says:

"The rider is said to be St. George from 1730. This version of the arms is dated 1856"
The dominant colors are in effect red, blue and white.

Another book says about the three colors:

"The imperial Russia had a red,blue and white flag, created in 1697 by Peter the Great, based on Holland's (...) It was the origin of pan-slavic colors, used by Serbia, Slovakia, Croatia and Bosna (...) The white-blue-red flag was used till the fall of Kerensky's government, in November 1917. The same happened to the two-headed eagle, without the imperial crown"
Note that the 1856 version of St.George shows the rider going from right to left, while on modern shields bot rider and dragon are turned from left to right, whith the spear still in the foreground, making the right-handed knight's position more natural.

The black yellow white flag

[Emperors Standart] The Russian nationalists' black-yellow-white is based on the Russian Emperor Standart of 1858-1917 which follows itself the colours of imperial shield featuring black two-headed eagle on yellow field.


Russian Navy "St.Andrew" flag

[St. Andrew flag] Aldo Ziggioto, the CISV (Centro Italiano Studi Vessillologici) president, wrote a little book about the Russian flags: "Tre secoli di storia attraverso le bandiere" (3 centuries of history thru flags). According to him, both flags were drawn by Peter the Great:

"The military poop flag is white, with a full-sized blue cross of St.Andrew, because the Christianity became to Russian people from this apostle", explained Peter the Great in 1712. St. Andrew is also the patron saint of Russia. In fact since 1701 the Russian fleet was divided into 3 formations, each of them using a different flag: the first formation's (battle vessels) flag was white, the second one's (vanguard) was blue and the third one's (rear-guard) was red. All of them have a white canton with a blue St.Andrew cross.
The Russian Navy used a very great number of flags, more than one hundred. The quoted book shows 22 of them.

Comments to : Oxana Smirnova, oxana@quark.lu.se