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Russian subnational flags

Last modified: 2007-10-06 by antónio martins
Keywords: law | governor |
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See also: External links:
  • Official Web-Site of Russian Centre of Vexillology and Heraldry
  • Civic flags registered in the Union of Heraldists of Russia,
    reported by Pascal Gross, 12 Jan 2000
  • www.vexillographia.narod.ru/: Victor Lomantsov’s civic heraldry and vexillolgy pages.
  • Sovereign flags and coats of arms of Russian regions (by Yury Rocich): at www.chat.ru/~heraldica/ and www.geraldika.ru/
    reported by Michael Simakov, 12 Jan 2000

    This site was designed by Yu. Rocich. He wanted to make a big site on flags and arms. Many people helped to Yuri (and me too). But now Yuri is very busy, and the work on site is stopped until unknown date. The information of this site is not complete, of course.
    Victor Lomantsov, 09 Dec 2001

  • odur.let.rug.nl/~bergmann/
    reported by J. J. Andersson, 01 Feb 2002

    Most images were indeed taken from FOTW, and displayed (granted that in a reduced format) without any acknowledgment, becoming obsolete as FOTW-ws evolves
    António Martins, 02 Feb 2002

  • Huge Russian heraldic site; it includes a large section on flags, too.
    reported by Željko Heimer, 18 Apr 2001

    I think they took their images from FOTW or other famous flag-sites. Some are now outdated.
    Victor Lomantsov, 18 Apr 2001

    That is Ilya Morozov’s site. It shows a peculiar selection of flags. Most of them (98 out of 100) come either from Pascal’s site or from FOTW — some were taken from our site, some directly from our mailing list. Most of the older images were meanwhile replaced on FOTW-ws with better ones. (I’d also call your attention to the strange translation options: oblasth being not translated and kraĭ being anglicized as "region" — usually it is "territory", while "region" is prefered for oblasth.)
    António Martins, 29 Nov 2002

  • Symbols of members of the Russian Federation
    reported by Jorge Candeias
  • Flags of Russian Federation’s Cities and Towns
    reported by Dov Gutterman, Jan 2002

    Shows images taken from Ilya Morozov’s website…
    Pascal Gross, 28 Jan 2002

  • Map, flags and arms of the subdivisions of Russia
    reported by István Molnár, 04 Dec 2001
  • City website, with all the cities, regions, republics etc. of the Russian federation, showing the arms or flags.
    reported by Fred Drews, 28 Mar 1999
  • Blazons of Russian Towns, by Ilya Morozov
    reported by António Martins, 06 Nov 2001
  • Website displaying a lot of coat of arms of Russian towns.
    reported by Pascal Gross, 29 Jan 2001
  • Website with coats of arms of Russian cities.
    reported by István Molnár, 08 Jan 2001
  • Website with some coats of arms of Russian town. (Only in Russian!)
    reported by István Molnár, 04 Dec 2001
  • Arms of the Russian Cities in english; also in russian, in the encodings Win1251, ISO 8859-5, DOS (IBM 866), KOI8-R and Mac
  • Rusline, with a lot of information about Regions and Territories.
    reported by Dov Gutterman, 17 Dec 1998
  • Oleg Gerasimov’s proposal for a new administrative division of Russia, with new subnational (and even national!) flags to match.
    reported by Dirk Schönberger, 25 Nov 2002

Russian subnational flags

All Russian Federation subdivisions are entitled to have flags, but subjects other than republics were allowed to adopt flags only shortly before (or in early) 1994.
António Martins, 20 Dec 1999 and 11 Mar 2000

In an only partly related article in The Moscow Times, it is said that the national government now claims a right to allow or disallow subdivisional flags.
John Ayer, 12 Dec 2002

Left without flag now are only the following 1st order subdivisions:

  • Arkhangelsk region (officially confirmed as flagless as of 2002.02.08; private proposals circulate)
  • Nizhny-Novgorod region (confirmed as flagless as of 1999.03.01 and 2000.04.24)
  • Novgorod region (officially confirmed as flagless as of 2002.02.08; informal flag officially suggested on 1999.05.31 but as of 1999.11.15 apparently not used)
Pascal Gross, 05 Feb 2002 (dully updated)

Russian subdivisions flag laws are quite similar and actually they follow each other almost word by word and in turn were based on the current russian constitution (article about the flag, coat-of-arms, anthem and capital) and flag laws — which in turn was taken with minor differences from the soviet constitution of 1980, or possibly earlier.
António Martins, 20 Jan 2000

Unstrict enforcement of flag laws (regarding design) is not uncommon — Adygeia flies a medium green flag and its law says dark aquamarine, Yakutia flies a medium blue flag and its laws says light blue, Chuvashia flies a medium red flag and its law says dark red, and probably more.
António Martins, 19 Apr 2000

Four 1st level Russian subdivisions use dark red as a major color of its flags: Moscow City, Mordovia, Chuvashia and Mariy El.
António Martins, 08 Dec 2006

I am most impressed by these Russian municipal flags — some fine vexillography being done in Russia it seems!
Rob Raeside, 15 Mar 2003


Soviet-inspired design

The design of many current, post-soviet Russian subnational flags includes an unmistakable soviet element — the vertical bar at the hoist.
António Martins, 12 Jan 2003

In Russia any flag of any color a vertical strip at a staff reminds the flag of RSFSR.
Mikhail Revnivtsev, 06 Oct 2005

Some of these are:

Of course there are also flags and emblems including hammers and sickles, etc.
António Martins, 21 Nov 2005


Legal restriction to mainly horizontal white-blue-red Russian subnational flags

One of the requests of the Russian federal constitutional law About the State Flag of Russian Federation, prohibits as a fundamentals for flags of the subjects of federation to utillize a State Flag of Russia.
Mikhail Revnivtsev, 29 Jan 2003

This already caused the change of the Khakassian republic flag, in 2003. Changes are to be expected also in the flags of Chukotka and Orenburg city, to name but two subnational flags.
António Martins, 29 Dec 2003

An exception is made in the case of flags pre-dating the legislation forbidding use of the National Flag on any regional flags.
Christopher Southworth, 29 Sep 2003


Trend to match the national flag ratio

It seems that the standard ratio for (territorial?) flags in Russia shall be 2:3 like the Federal Russian flag. The MPs adopted amendments in the Law about the State symbolic of Bashkortostan. Can we expect all the flags of Republic, regions, etc. be also 2:3 in ratio?
Pascal Vagnat, 30 Jan 2003

Yes, it’s the prevailing tendence: as since 1993 the State flag of the Russian Federation has a ratio of width by the length as 2:3. But some regions and some municipalities have flags with ratio as 1:2.
Mikhail Revnivtsev, 12 Aug 2005

A federal law imposing 2:3 ratio to all subnational flags does not exist. There is only an recommendation of Heraldic Council at the President of the Russian Federation about desirability of ratio 2:3 at adopting of flags of municipalities. This recommendation is considered at the decision of a question on registration flags of regions and municipalities in the State Heraldic Register of the Russian Federation.
Mikhail Revnivtsev, 16 Aug 2005


Russian subnational coats-of-arms

In some russian regions (V. Novgorod, f.i.) we have detected a pattern that the regional coat of arms is the same as the capital city coat of arms (which in turn is identical to the pre-1917 coat of arms), but with the traditional achievements (imperial crown and oak wreath with band), while the current city coat of arms shows only a civic crown.
António Martins, 04 Jan 2000

In russian heraldry (rules of 1857):

  • arms of towns must have red ribbons (St. Alexander Order) and mural crowns of different colours
  • arms of territories (oblast) must have red ribbons and “ancient prince crowns”
  • arms of governorates (gubernia) — blue ribbons (St. Andrew Order) and imperial crowns. The capitals (Moscow and St. Petersburg) used the imperial crowns on the city arms too.
  • Several ancient towns had special crowns (like ancient crowns of czars).
Modern Regions of Russian Federation are the Governorates in the past. That’s why they use blue ribbons on their arms (they copy old governorate’s arms, sometimes with imperial crown (Orenburg Region, Tomsk Region etc), sometimes without the crown (Saratov Region, Ulianovsk Region etc).
Victor Lomantsov, 07 Oct 2000

All major cities were granted arms during the Tsarist era — these exist today at least as traditional, unofficial coat of arms. In many cities, these have been officially (re)approved as official. And note that some even have had different coats of arms thrughout time, incl. in the soviet era, (e.g., Osmk).
António Martins, 02 Jul 2001

We have seen that in most cases the adopted arms are identical to the pre-1917 version, if not in detail, at least blazoned in the same way. This is true for most division capital cities, for many non-capital cities and even for the regions and territorries themselves (though excluding most republics and a few of the other divisions).
António Martins, 08 Apr 2000

Construction of civic arms divided per fess (with arms of provincial centre in upper part) is used in Russia since 1780ths. But in fact shields without provincial arms in upper part are used (since 1850ths) very often. The shield with prov. arms looks “old fashioned”.
Victor Lomantsov, 30 Mar 2000


Personal flags of region Governors and republic Presidents

Known to, and covered by, FotW:

Most of these flags are squarish (about 11:12), rigid and fringed variants of the region (Governors) or Republic (Presidents) flags with the regional emblem over all. (Like the Russian Federation presidential standard itself.)
António Martins, 02 Oct 2005

Standart are accepted at a legislative level in many Republics both some Oblasts and Autonomous Regions (In laws of Republic Sakha (Yakutia) such symbols are named auxiliary state symbols). Also there are the symbols combining symbolic of the arms and a flag, but thus, the documents regulating their use are not known. Such are a flag in studies of presidents of Republics Karelia and Altai, the governor of the Saratov Oblast.

The simplest variants of standarts are accepted in Republics. This imposing of the arms on a national flag. Such symbols have heads of Republics Bashkiria, Tatarstan, Maria El. Except for Republics on this way send authorities of the Rostov and Ryazan Oblasts. More difficultly a composition of heads standarts of Chuvashia. Personal flags of governors of the Perm Oblast and Komi-Permyak Autonomous Region have the original figures. It is remarkable, that the standart of the governor of the Perm area was accepted long before acceptance of a flag of the Region.

At the end of 1990 acceptance of standart the governor was extended. Such standarts were accepted in the Novgorod, Nizhniy Novgorod, Saratov, Kemerovo, Vladimir areas.

Sergey Filatov, 10 Oct 2005

About leaders’ titles of russian subdivisions

Republics have almost always a president (президент | prezident) while other subdivisions latter have a governor (губернатор | gubernator).
António Martins, 04 Apr 2000

Yes, but:

  • In the Republic of Altay, in the Republic of Karelia, in the Republic of Mordovia and in the Republic of Northern Ossetia - Alania first person in Region have title the Head of the Republic (Глава Республики | Glava Respubliki).
  • In the Republic of Khakassia — is the Chairman of the Government of the Republic (Председатель Правительства | Predsedatelh Pravitelhstva);
  • in the Republic of Dagestan — is the Chairman of the State Council of the Republic (Председатель Государственного Совета | Predsedatelh Gosudarstvennogo Soveta).
  • In different regions (krays, oblastes and autonomous okrugs) first regional persons have titles or the Governor (губернатор | gubernator),
  • or the Head of the Administration of the Kray / Oblast / Autonomous Okrug (Глава Администрации края / области / автономного округа | Glava Administracii kraâ / oblasti / avtonomnogo okruga ).
  • In federal city of Moscow first person is the Mayor (Мэр | Mêp).
  • In federal city of St.Petersburg is also Governor.
Mikhail Revnivtsev, 10 Oct 2005


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