Banners, banners and banners were used in Russia since ancient times. However, there is little reliable information about how Russian flags looked in the Middle Ages. Historians, for example, are still actively arguing about what color was the military banner of the Grand Duchy of Moscow - black or red.

“Most likely, the Moscow banner was scarlet or black — that is, dark red or crimson. And black color in historical sources could appear due to a banal copyist error, ”suggested in an interview with RT academician of the Academy of Political Sciences of the Russian Federation, head of the department of REU named after G.V. Plekhanova Andrey Koshkin.

Under Ivan III, the “sovereign banner” was red. His grandson, Ivan the Terrible, used a dark red banner with the image of the Most Gracious Savior and a banner with a border of cowberry color, which depicted the archangel Michael on a horse on an azure field and Jesus Christ on a sugar slope.

  • © Wikimedia Commons

In the second half of the 17th century, Russian tsars used red and white coat of arms with a golden eagle.

The riddle of tricolor

It is not known for certain who and when first raised the now white-blue-red tricolor. According to one version, he could appear in 1668 or 1669 on the first Russian warship “Orel”, built by order of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Either the Dutch merchant Johann van Swedenden, who participated in the organization of the construction, or the captain of the Eagle, David Butler, raised the question before the Russian authorities about what the flag would be on the ship. Alexei Mikhailovich, having learned that the flag of the Netherlands is red-white-blue, ordered to allocate fabric of similar colors for sewing flags, as well as depict golden eagles on them.

  • Flag of the Tsar of Moscow 1668
  • © Wikimedia Commons

However, as the ready-made Eagle flag looked, various sources describe it differently. You can find references to a flag with a blue cross and white and red roofs, a white-blue-red banner with a golden eagle, and also a banner similar in appearance to the modern state flag of Russia.

Reliable examples of the use of tricolor can be found only starting from the time of Peter the Great. In 1693, the white-blue-red “flag of the Tsar of Moscow”, decorated with a golden eagle, was hoisted on the 12-gun yacht Saint Peter.

A year later, under this flag, a 44-gun frigate, built by Peter the Great and later called the Holy Prophecy, was built in Rotterdam on an Amsterdam raid. Over time, similar flags began to appear more and more often in paintings of Peter the Great. In 1700, the king ordered the Armory to make white-red-purple banners.

  • View of the city of Astrakhan and the frigate "Eagle" with a flotilla
  • © Wikimedia Commons

In 1709, in the table “Expression of the sea flags of all the states of the universe”, the white-blue-red flag appeared as “the usual trading and all kinds of Russian flag vessels”. Finally, the tricolor was fixed as a flag of the Russian merchant fleet in the Maritime Charter of 1720.

From Peter to the Revolution

In parallel with the tricolor, Peter I at the beginning of the 18th century approved the tsar’s standard - a yellow panel with a two-headed black eagle holding nautical charts. In 1742, in connection with the coronation of Elizaveta Petrovna, a new state banner of the Russian Empire was created, echoing the Tsar’s standard of Peter — a yellow cloth with a black double-headed eagle. The state flag was used in a similar style, which was used during the coronation of Alexander II in 1856. In this regard, the emblem colors in the empire were considered black, yellow and white.

  • Practical maneuvers of the Dutch squadron in honor of Peter I, September 1, 1697
  • © Wikimedia Commons

At the same time, in most countries the state flag and the flag of the merchant fleet coincided. Therefore, in the world Russia was associated in many with a white-blue-red tricolor.

Before the coronation of Alexander III in 1883, the Highest Command was issued, announced by the Minister of the Interior. According to his requirements, in solemn occasions it was possible to decorate buildings in Russia exclusively with white-blue-red flags.

The discussion about the colors of the national flag that began under Alexander III continued under Nicholas II. In 1896, a special meeting declared the Russian flag a white-blue-red flag. The emperor himself came to a similar decision. In 1899, the tricolor was designated in the Maritime Charter not as a commercial one, but as a national flag. However, this decision caused heated debate in society. They tried to reconcile the parties by “unification” of the flags - the creation of a banner with white-blue-red stripes and a yellow square with a black eagle. But this state symbol did not take root.

“In the First World War, it was precisely the three colors we were used to that were used as the main symbol,” said Alexander Tsvetkov, a specialist in heraldry in a conversation with RT.

After the February Revolution, the Provisional Government considered the white-blue-red tricolor neutral enough and confirmed its use as a national flag. During the Civil War, White Guards also frequently performed under it.

"Panslavian colors"

“The colors of the tricolor are pan-Slavic colors. This is due to the times of the XIX century, when the first Slavic Congress took place in 1848 in Prague. Participants from different countries decided that they will take the Russian flag as the basis, ”said Nikita Gusev, scientific secretary of the Department of the History of Slavic Peoples of the World War II Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

  • Russian aircraft with white-blue-red symbols of the First World War
  • Gettyimages.ru
  • © Hulton Archive

Slavic peoples living in central and southeastern Europe were enslaved by the Ottoman and Austrian empires for centuries. Russia provided them with support and patronage. Therefore, the participants in the Slavic Congress took the tricolor as the basis for the symbolism of their national liberation movements, the expert explained.

During the congress, the Moraves performed under the white-red-blue flag. In 1848, the blue-red-white tricolor declared its banner the Lusatian Serbs. Slovenian patriots duplicated the Russian flag, while the Slovak took it in the opposite order. In 1918, the blue-white-red colors became a symbol of the South Slavic state.

State symbol

Soviet Russia in 1918 decided to switch to using a red flag with the inscription of the RSFSR. But in 1990, a discussion began in the republic regarding the change of flag. On August 22, 1991, the Supreme Council decided to consider the state flag of the Russian Federation as "a cloth of equal horizontal white, azure and scarlet stripes." In 1994, the Presidential Decree established the State Flag Day of the Russian Federation on August 22.

Today, the flag of Russia is its official state symbol in accordance with the current Constitution, along with an anthem and coat of arms. It is a rectangular panel of three equal horizontal stripes of white, blue and red. The ratio of the width of the flag to its length is two to three.

“There is no official version of the relative of what the colors of the flag mean, and in principle it never existed. There were various mythological speculations. For example, one of the most common myths about white is Great White Russia, blue is the cover of the Virgin, ”said Alexander Tsvetkov.

According to Andrei Koshkin, it was the white-blue-red banner that accompanied Russia at the “most difficult moments of its history: during the formation of the empire under Peter I, on the battlefields of the First World War”.

“The Russian flag symbolizes the historical continuity of generations,” said Koshkin.