From the "Great Sovereign of Flags" to the modern tricolor

The Russian Federation State Flag Day is celebrated in our country on August 22. On this day in 1991, a white-blue-red flag (tricolor) appeared over the Government House on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment, replacing the red Soviet banner, under which the country had lived since 1918.

The materials of the section "Symbols of State Authority" of one of the four basic collections of the Presidential Library "State Authority" contain more information about the history of the state flag.

The well-known historian of the Navy, heraldist Pyotr Belavenets has devoted several books to the history of the Russian flag. One of them, "A Brief Note on Old Russian Banners" (1911), an electronic copy of which is presented on the Presidential Library's portal, says that flags, or banners, as they were called earlier, were allowed to be dismissed only before the battle, and each army fought under with your banner. “The most important, of course, were the so-called Great Sovereign banners. They came closest to the designation of the current standard, for they indicated the presence of the Emperor”, - the historian writes. He also points out that in most of the sovereign's banners, the scarlet (red) color prevailed, which was complemented by white, different shades of blue and green, as well as iconographic embroidery in gold and silver.

In his other book - "The Colors of the Russian State National Flag" (1910) - Pyotr Belavenets expounds a version of the emergence of a single state flag since the time of Peter the Great's father, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, when trade with foreign countries began to develop rapidly. “Various combinations of colors of white, blue and red are at the heart of all Russian naval flags since 1667, then established as the colors of the Moscow state”, - he writes.

In 1667, by order of Alexei Mikhailovich, the construction of the first Russian sailing warship "Oryol" began at the shipyard in the village of Dedinovo, Kolomensky district. From a rare edition of 1910 “Flag of the Tsar of Moscow, kept in the cathedral of the mountains. Arkhangelsk since 1693", an electronic copy of which is available in the collection of the Presidential Library, one can find out that before the construction of the ship's commander Butler sent a letter to the tsar in which he asked about the flag, because, in his words, "which state is the ship, that state is banner".

The tradition of using white, blue and red colors for the flag was continued by Peter I, the son of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Evstafy Voronets, historian and Orthodox publicist, in the book "What colors are established by history and Russian laws for the distinctive Russian all-estate and state flag?" (1892) expresses this opinion: “The colors red, blue and white were the ancient state colors of Holland, and Emperor Peter I, probably out of respect for Holland, where the Tsar himself and Russia first acquired knowledge of navigation, took the color of this country for the Russians only commercial and merchant ships ". Assumptions that the Russian flag was adopted in imitation of the Dutch one were also expressed by other authors, but historians and heraldists have no consensus on this issue.

Howbeit, while in Arkhangelsk in the summer of 1693, the young tsar, sailing on the 12-gun yacht "St. Peter", raised a white-blue-red flag with a golden double-headed eagle depicted in the center. The eagle was under three crowns with a scepter and a power in its paws and a shield on which a rider was depicted striking a dragon with a spear. As noted in the documentary film of the Presidential Library "Symbols of Presidential Authority", one of the authors of which is the Chief Herald of Russia, Chairman of the Heraldic Council under the President of Russia Georgy Vilinbakhov, the two-headed eagle belongs to the legendary figures - it is a symbol of heavenly, solar power, fire and immortality. Its oldest image, dated to the 13th century BC, was found on a stone relief in Asia Minor and is associated with the Hittite state. In Russia, the first image of this figure appeared in the 1490s, as an element of the white-stone decorative decoration of the Borovitskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin. Most scholars believe that the two-headed eagle "flew" to Russia together with Sophia Palaeologus, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, who in 1472 married the Grand Duke John III. The appearance of a two-headed eagle in Russian state symbols served as one of the external manifestations of the political theory about the succession of the royal power by the Moscow princes from Rome and Byzantium. This also reflected Moscow's claims to become the third Rome after the fall of Rome and Byzantium, to further strengthen its position in the Orthodox world.

In 1693, Tsar Peter Alekseevich bestowed this flag on the Arkhangelsk Archbishop Athanasius. At the beginning of the 20th century, the flag of the Tsar of Moscow was solemnly brought from Arkhangelsk to St. Petersburg and is now kept in the Central Naval Museum named after Emperor Peter the Great. Unfortunately, it is very dilapidated and requires special care - the flag is wound on a special container, and a roll almost 5 meters long is installed on a stand.

It is likely that the flag of the Tsar of Moscow was the first standard of Peter I at the beginning of the 18th century. Simultaneously with the existence of this flag, the development of a new flag system began. Petr Alekseevich was engaged in this personally - it is not for nothing that he is called the "father" of the tricolor. In his work "The Colors of the Russian State National Flag" Belavenets writes: "In 1700, setting off on the Kerch campaign, the Tsar himself drew a picture of the flag for the ships - it has three horizontal stripes white-blue-red. It was under such a flag that the ship "Fortress" headed to Constantinople ... How long this flag was a military one, I cannot indicate, probably until 1703, when the "standard in the image of the cross of St. Andrew" was announced". That is, the St. Andrew's flag was introduced for the navy - with a blue diagonal cross on a white background, but only the merchant fleet was allowed to raise the white-blue-red flag, which could seem a belittling of its dignity. In fact, in accordance with the international flag tradition, it is the flag of the merchant and civilian fleet that is the national state flag. "The autograph of the hand-drawn drawing of Tsar Peter Alekseevich" was published in the book "A Brief Note on Old Russian Banners", an electronic copy of which is posted on the Presidential Library’s portal.

After the Battle of Poltava in 1709, when the Muscovy began to be called the Russian Empire, the sovereign wanted to update literally everything. This also applied to the banner. The tricolor changed the standard of a new sample - a yellow flag with a black double-headed eagle, on whose chest in a white shield is depicted St. George piercing a dragon. According to the heraldist Vladimir Belinsky in his work "The Russian National Flag and Its Reform", which can be found in the electronic reading room of the Presidential Library or in any of the remote access centers, it was a personal initiative of Peter I. According to Peter Belavenets, a combination of black, yellow and white “appeared for the first time in 1709 on the Russian Standard, since 1742 it was introduced as the coat of arms on officer scarves and only in 1858 by the Highest command were they united in the flag and named at the same time the coat of arms, and in 1864 they were named as a ribbon for a medal state colors”. Details about the development of the flag are described in the documentary “State Symbols of Russia. Film 2. Flag of Russia”, posted on the Presidential Library’s portal.

This flag existed until 1896, and only on the eve of the coronation of Nicholas II, the status of the only state flag of the Russian Empire was finally assigned to the white-blue-red flag. This is how Pyotr Belavenets described this fact in his book "The Colors of the Russian State National Flag": "With the permission of His Imperial Majesty, a special meeting was held on the establishment of the colors of the national flag ... which in 1896, in its final decision, spoke in favor of the colors white-blue-red , completely rejecting the combination of colors black-yellow-white, finding that the latter colors “have neither heraldic nor historical basis”. It was at this time that the three colors of the flag, which became national, received an official interpretation. White symbolized freedom and independence, blue - the color of the Mother of God, who patronized Russia, and red meant statehood".

After the revolution, in 1918, the white-blue-red flag was replaced again. Our country lived under the red Soviet banner until August 22, 1991, when an extraordinary session of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR decided to consider the tricolor the official symbol of Russia. The white-blue-red flag was approved by the Federal Constitutional Law of December 25, 2000 "On the State Flag of the Russian Federation" and, along with the anthem and coat of arms, belongs to the official symbols of the state.

In addition to the already mentioned electronic copies of rare books and documentaries, the Presidential Library’s portal contains other materials devoted to the history of the state flag. The video lecture of the executive secretary of the Heraldic Council under the President of the Russian Federation Gleb Kalashnikov, the pages with illustrations from the Album of Standards, Flags and Pennants of the Russian Empire and Foreign States (1890), as well as the Album of Flags and Pennants of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, union Soviet republics and foreign states "(1923) are publicly available.