Russia (1991-1993) (original) (raw)

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Russian Federation

image by Rick Wyatt and António Martins, 07 Oct 2000

Law text
About different ratio
About different color names See also:
Russia

Law text

Law (Zakon) of RSFSR from 1st of November, 1991, proclaimed colours and outlook of our flag as follows:

State flag of Russia is a rectangular »« with three equal-size horizontal bands: the upper one is white (белый), the middle one — azure (лазоревый), and the lower one is scarlet (алый). Width/length relation equals 1/2.

Kirill Marchuk, 04 May 2001

Strange… I don’t know about this Law. The National flag of Russia was approved with Decision of 22, August, 1991 and hoisted upon building of Government. Law on flag (and changing of Constitution) was adopted on 21, April, 1992.
Victor Lomantsov, 04 May 2001

About different ratio

The right official ratio is 2:3. It was been changed by Presidential decree No 2126 (11 december 1993). In 1991 when Russian tricolor was officially adopted one had 1:2 ratio.
Michael Simakov, 25 Jan 1999, and_Victor Lomantsov_, 10 Nov 1999

The flag of the Russian Federation was changed from 1:2 to 2:3 in late 1993. But that raises another question, namely: Why were the proportions of the Russian flag changed?
Mark Sensen, 18 Jan 2000

Ratio was changed in 1993 from 1:2 to 2:3 because russian flag before 1917 always was 2:3. It is a “historical” ratio. Onlysoviet flags had ratio 1:2.
Victor Lomantsov, 07 May 2000

Perhaps to return to the pre-soviet ratio and/or negate the 1:2 ratio, typical of soviet flags… And why wasn’t it made 2:3 right in 1991? Because the soviet heritage was either consciously conserved (as in "new russia = soviet ratio + Tsarist colors"…), or nobody noticed/care about it then…
António Martins, 20 Jan 2000

About different color names

In official text (1991-1993): white-azure-scarlet really the flag was, is and shall be white-blue-red. Authors of flag-decision of 1991 were not vexillologists. They didn’t knew vexillological terminology. They considered that "white", "blue" and "red" are very “ordinary” words and they decided to use more “refined” words: "azure" and "scarlet". (For example, in heraldry, “ordinary” words are not used. Instead heraldists say "gules", "azure", "vert" etc instead of "red", "blue" and "green"…) In 1993 this terminological vagueness was corrected.
Victor Lomantsov, 02 May 2000

This means that real flags had no difference in color shade, only thewords used on the law were different. The 1991-1993 shade of blue was neither darker nor lighter.
António Martins, 06 May 2000