On this day 128 years ago, white-blue-red became the national flag of Russian troops by order of the military department:
National colours.
In the order of the military department of the 9th of May of this year №102 it is announced that the Emperor of the State on the 29th day of April has deigned to declare that the national flag should be the white-blue-red flag in all cases and other flags should not be allowed.
With the establishment of the national flag, in our opinion, the combination of colours should be changed: cockades on helmets, caps, caps and hats, as well as in scarves, instead of black-orange-white it must be white-blue-red. The colours of grenadier badges, weathervanes and the colours of sentry boxes, barriers on guardrooms, fortress gates, barriers, flagpoles and drum hoops should be changed in the same way.
The colours of cockades and scarves representing the emblem of nationality should, in our opinion, be changed urgently.
This change in the War Office was the result of an imperial command announced at the end of April that year.
In the modern version of Russia's national history it is believed that the white-blue-red flag was introduced by Tsar Peter the Great more than three centuries ago, but not only no documents confirming this have survived, but there are not even enough old artistic images of such a flag with a reliable provenance. According to the surviving documents, the national flag white-blue-red was in the Russian Empire a little more than 20 years. Before that, the Romanovs used black-orange-white, largely identical to the
Habsburg flag.
For example,
these colours are clearly visible on the colour image of the
Russian imperial yacht Polar Star.
Before that, the white-blue-red flag was used by the
colonial Russian-American Company. According to surviving documents, these colours were originally the flag of the first Russian joint-stock company, and not chosen, allegedly, a century earlier by Peter the Great, as is commonly believed in the modern national version of history. Perhaps similarly, the structure of the flag of the
colonial British East India Company later became the basis for the national flag of the United States.
Some modern revisionists suggest that the
Oldenburg Romanov dynasty abandoned the Habsburg colours in anticipation of the First World War, in which Russia was fighting the Germans. In this case, it is noteworthy that the
Russian Provisional Government and the subsequent
Russian State that did not recognise the Brest Peace (i.e. the end of WWI) were also under this white-blue-red flag. And the
Soviet Red Army (respectively under the red flag) was formed precisely to fight counter-revolutionary forces under the white-blue-red flag.
It is also noteworthy that in the subsequent Second World War, the Soviet forces remained under the red flag, while the various Russian collaboration forces that collaborated with the Germans were under the white-blue-red flag (
Russian Liberation Army,
Russian Protective Corps,
Sonderdivision Russland, and
others). Although
some modern Russian monarchists for some reason try to claim that all this never happened.
Color, 1945, Germany: Surrendering German Troops - 250088-06
by footagefarm on YouTubeThus, according to surviving documents, the white-blue-red flag has been used by the Russian Federation for the longest period of time in the form of the national flag and is still in use today. Noticeably less period of time it was used by the Russian Empire, and also various counter-revolutionary and collaborationist military formations. Well and the longest time in its history this flag was used by the Russian-American Company.
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