The national flag of Russia is a tricolour of three equal horizontal bands: white on the top, blue in the middle, and red on the bottom.
The design was first introduced by Tsar Peter the Great in 1693, and in 1705 it was adopted as the civil ensign of the Tsardom of Russia; the flag continued to be used as a civil ensign under the Russian Empire. In 1858, Emperor Alexander II declared the black-yellow-white tricolour as the national flag, and in 1896 it was replaced by the white-blue-red tricolour by Nicholas II. In 1917, following the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks banned the tricolour, though it continued to be flown by the White movement during the Russian Civil War. The flag of the Russian SFSR was a red field with its Cyrillic acronym "" in the upper-left corner, and after 1954, was a red field with a vertical blue stripe on the left and a gold hammer and sickle.
Shortly after the August Coup in 1991, the Russian SFSR adopted the imperial tricolour as the national flag of Russia, although with slightly different dimensions and colour shades than the current version. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the year, the newly independent Russian Federation inherited the redesigned flag, and its current proportions and shades were specified by President Boris Yeltsin in 1993.
Origin Two accounts of the flag's origin connect it to the tricolour used by the Dutch Republic (the Statenvlag, later the flag of the Netherlands).
The earliest mention of the flag occurs during the reign of Alexis I, in 1668, and is related to the construction of the first Russian naval ship, the frigate Oryol. According to one source, the ship's Dutch lead engineer Butler faced the need for the flag, and issued a request to the Boyar Duma, to "ask His Royal Majesty as to which (as is the custom among other nations) flag shall be raised on the ship". The official response merely indicated that, as such issue is as yet unprecedented, even though the land forces do use (apparently different) flags, the tsar ordered that his (Butler's) opinion be sought about the matter, asking specifically as to the custom existing in his country.
A different account traces the origins of the Russian flag to tsar Peter the Great's visits to Arkhangelsk in 1693 and 1694. Peter was keenly interested in shipbuilding in the European style, different from the barges ordinarily used in Russia at the time. In 1693, Peter had ordered a Dutch-built frigate from Amsterdam. In 1694 when it arrived, the Dutch red, white, and blue banner flew from its stern.Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great, 160 (Modern Library Edition 2012) Peter decided to model Russia's naval flag after that banner by assigning meaning and reordering the colours.
The Dutch flag book of 1695 by Carel Allard, printed only a year after Peter's trip to Western Europe, describes the tricolour with a double-headed eagle bearing a shield on its breast and wearing a golden crown over both of its heads.
History
A study on clarifying the national colours of Russia based on disquisition on documents of the Moscow Archive of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Empire was summarised by Dmitry Samokvasov, a Russian archaeologist and legal historian, in an edition of 16 pages called "On the Question of National Colours of Ancient Russia" published in Moscow in 1910.Самоквасов Д. Я. К вопросу о государственных цветах древней России. — М.: тип. Саблина, 1910. — 16 с. Russian State Library
1552–1918: Tsardom, Empire, and Republic
In 1552, Russian regiments marched on the victorious assault of Kazan under Ivan the Terrible with the banner of the Most Gracious Saviour. For the next century and a half, the banner of Ivan the Terrible accompanied the Russian army. Under Tsarina Sophia Alekseevna, it visited the Crimean campaigns, and under Peter the Great, the Azov campaigns and the Russo-Swedish War.
In the Illustrated Chronicle of Ivan the Terrible, there is an image of the banner of Ivan the Terrible in the Kazan campaign – a bifurcated white one with the image of the Saviour and an eight-pointed cross above it. According to other sources, the banner was red instead of white. A copy of this banner, which has been restored many times, is still kept in the Kremlin Armoury.
In 1612, the Nizhny Novgorod militia raised the banner of Dmitry Pozharsky, it was crimson in colour with the image of the Lord Almighty on one side and the archangel Michael on the other.
In 1669, the Polish painters Stanislav Loputsky and Ivan Mirovsky invited by Tsar Alexis of Russia, painted for the tsar's palace in Kolomenskoye "the hallmarks (that is, the emblems) of the sovereigns and all the universal states of this world." Then Loputsky drew "on the canvas, the coat of arms of the Moscow State and the arms of other neighbouring countries, under every emblem of the planet under which they are." The coat of arms was a white rectangular banner with a "slope" and a wide red border, in the centre of which was depicted a gold two-headed eagle and the emblems symbolising the subject kingdoms, principalities and lands. In the inventory of the Kremlin Armoury, the coat of arms is described as the following: "In the circle there is a two-headed eagle wearing two crowns, and in his chest, the king on horseback pricks a serpent with his spear".
On 6 August 1693, during Peter the Great's sailing in the White Sea with a detachment of warships built in Arkhangelsk, the so-called "Flag of the Tsar of Muscovy"Central Naval Museum, St. Petersburg. List of exhibited artefacts. Flag of the Tsar of Muscovy. was raised for the first time on the 12-gun yacht "Saint Peter". The flag was a cross-stitch of 4.6 × 4.9 metres sewn from cloth, composed of three equal-sized horizontal stripes of white, blue and red, with a golden double-headed eagle in the middle.Белавенец П. И. Флаг Царя Московского, хранившийся в кафедральном соборе города Архангельска с 1693 года / Бюллетень Управления геральдики Государственной архивной службы Российской Федерации. Вып. No. 1, октябрь 1993 г., — С. 3 The original of this oldest surviving Russian flag is located in the Central Naval Museum in Saint Petersburg.
A 1695 flag book by Carel Allard describes three flags used by the tsar of Muscovy: the tricolour with the double-headed eagle bearing a shield on its breast and wearing a golden crown over both of its heads, the same tricolour with a blue saltire over it, and a cross flag showing red and white quartering with a blue cross over all. The cross flag is depicted upon the Construction of Kronschloss Medal, which commemorates the construction of Fort Kronschlot (Kronschloss) in Kronstadt by Peter the Great in 1704, the colours of the flag being determined according to the hatchings engraved.
The armorial banner of Peter the Great was created in 1696. Made from red taffeta with a white border, the flag depicted a golden eagle hovering over the sea. On the chest of the eagle in the circle is the Saviour, next to the Holy Spirit and the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. The banner was likely made for the second Azov campaign.
In 1693, Franz Timmerman received the order to build merchant ships in Arkhangelsk and trade with Europe. He was told to display the two-headed eagle spread with wings, with three crowns over it. On the chest of the eagle, a warrior on horseback was to be displayed with a spear, in a military harness. The same eagle was also to hold a sceptre with the right leg and an apple with a crest with the left. The same instructions were given to other traders.Елагин С. Наши флаги. / Морской сборник, т. LXVIII, 1863, No. 10 – С. 231
According to Dutch newspapers, in June 1694, a 44-gun frigate bought by Russia and built in Rotterdam stood in the Amsterdam roadstead under the white-blue-red flag.Басов А. Н. История военно-морских флагов. — М.: Аст, СПб.: Полигон, 2004, , С.46
In 1696, at the mouth of the river Don, a Russian flotilla of armed rowboats blocked the supply of the Ottoman fortress of Azov. On the 1700 engraving by Adrian Shkhonebek, Taking the fortress of Azov. 1696, depicts the ships carrying rectangular panels on the flagpoles, the heraldic shading of which shows that some of the flags are blue with a straight red cross, and the rest are white with a straight red cross. A number of researchers doubt the accuracy of Shkonebek's engraving because he was not a witness to the events.Оленин Р. М., Карманов В. В. От первого корабля до первого Устава. История морских флагов России (1669–1725 гг.). — СПб.: «Шатон», 2006. — С. 54
Images of various white-blue-red Russian flags are present in the three later paintings of Abraham Storck's workshop dedicated to the arrival in Amsterdam of Peter I. Peter I took part in a practice battle on the river IJ while on board the yacht of the Dutch East India Company.Uiterst links een jacht met de Russische vlag en tsaar Peter de Grote aan boord, gekleed in het rood (Слева – яхта под флагом России с царём Петром I на борту, одетым в красное). In the paintings of Abraham Stork depicting the show fight, this yacht sails under the white-blue-red flag with a double-headed eagle, or under a white-red-blue pennant and a white-red-blue aft flag with a double-headed eagle.
In October 1699, Peter the Great, on the back of the sheet with instructions sent to the Russian envoy Yemelyan Ukraintsev in Istanbul, drew a sketch of a three-band white-blue-red flag.Устрялов Н. Г. История царствования Петра Великого. Т. IV. — СПб., 1863. Карты, планы и схемы. — С. 15 (копия листа с приложения No. 14)
In December 1699, the Austrian ambassador Anton Paleyer gave a list of weapons and flags seen on the vessels of the Azov Flotilla in a letter. He described seeing three small flags of white-red-blue colours and two regimental colours of red and white mixed in with other colours.Елагин С. И. История русского флота. Период Азовский. Приложения. Ч. 1. — СПб., 1864 – С. 428–429
In April 1700, Peter the Great ordered the Kremlin Armoury to build white-red-violet sea banners. The design and dimensions of these banners correspond to the figure and the size of the regimental banner kept among the other 352 trophy Russian banners in the burial vault of Swedish kings – the Riddarholm Church in Stockholm.П. И. Белавенец. Краткая записка о старых русских знамёнах. — СПб, 1911. С.33
The three-band white-blue-red flag, as well as the flag with a red Jerusalem cross, were also used on warships up to 1720 as signals.Оленин Р. М., Карманов В. В. От первого корабля до первого Устава. История морских флагов России (1669–1725 гг.). — СПб.: «Шатон», 2006. — С. 207
On 31 January [O.S. 20 January] 1705, Peter the Great issued an official ukaz decreeing the white-blue-red tricolour as the commercial maritime flag for all Russian merchant vessels. The colours later inspired the selection of the Pan-Slavic colors at the Prague Slavic Congress, 1848, which influenced the flags of other Slavic nations, including Slovakia, Slovenia, and Serbia.
On 23 June [O.S. 11 June] 1858, Emperor Alexander II decreed the black-yellow-white tricolour as the official heraldic state flag, based on the dynastic colours of the Romanov coat of arms. This led to a period of dual usage, with government buildings flying the black-yellow-white colours while merchant ships and private citizens continued using the white-blue-red flag. On 28 April 1883, Alexander III authorized the white-blue-red flag to be used on land for decorating buildings during public festivities.