Flags of Russia

This is a blog about the funny/awesome/weird/quirky flags of various regions in the Russian federation (and occasionally other places too)

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Flag of Spas-Zagore, Maloyaroslavets district, Kaluga Oblast

Yo dawg I heard you like flags and Orthodox Christianity so I put a Jesus flag on your flag, so you can raise your flag and worship Jesus

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Flag of Povenets, Medvezhyegorsky district, Republic of Karelia

I’m curious about why there’s a pyramid there so I googled until I came across the actual government document regarding the adaptation of the coat of arms (which is essentially everything you see on the flag but on a shield), and apparently it is a commemoration of when Peter the Great stopped by the town to escort a couple of frigates, which is historically the only memorable thing that ever happened to Povenets.

Still doesn’t fully explain the pyramid so I won’t cross out illuminati ties just yet

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Flag of Verkh-Inversky rural settlement, Kudmykarsky district, Perm Krai

Perm Krai is mostly inhabited by the Komi people, an Uralic tribe native to Northeastern Russia. This flag depicts a Komi woman wearing a traditional dress, with the dress merging into a solid blue sectionat the bottom. There’s something quite… interesting about the wavy accents on the women’s dress, it probably is a reference to the rivers flowing through this area. The symbol on the top right seem to have appeared a couple of times in a number of flags. Haven’t really figured out what it means yet but I’ll get back to it

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Courtesy of nietzschebrod:

The symbol is "Perna". Sort of Komi sigil.

There is more info on the Russian wiki on Perna. There are 2 versions, the one above and the one that looks like a W

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Flag of Zvyozdny gorodok urban settlement, Moscow Oblast 

To be clear, Zvyozdny gorodok is the municipality in which Star City (which is a ZATO, see notes on the flag of Mirny) is located (Zvyozdny gorodok itself is “star city” in Russian). Star City is where many of the cosmonauts of the Soviet Union have their training. more specifically the Yuri Gagarin Training Center. Back then it was a highly secret and guarded military facility. Was jumping through hoops a regiment of their training? Who knows. Many current cosmonauts live in this area when they’re not in space. Nowadays you can go on a tour to Star City, although you’d have to obtain a permit in advance.

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Flag of Solikamsk, Perm Krai

I did wonder for a while on why this well has suspiciously white water, but turns out it’s supposed to be a salt well, which TIL is actually a thing. Not sure if it really works that way in that there’s just huge chunks of salt inside the earth waiting to be carried by the bucket

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Flag of Chagodoshchensky district, Vologda Oblast

For a second there I thought this was one of those triangle illusions. It doesn’t seem impossible but still looks kinda wonky. So all of the symbolism here got to do with glassmaking, the economic stronghold of this region

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Flag of  Bolsherechensky, Irkutsk district, Irkutsk Oblast 

You know how bad this flag is? The state heraldic registry of Russia refused to include it

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Flag of Lotoshino, Moscow Oblast

“Hello tovarish, would you like to buy some cheese?” - Golden Lotoshino man

Lotoshino was basically founded as a cheese factory by some Russian prince, so they take great pride in their cheese. Can’t really find what kind of cheese exactly they’re producing. If anyone knows, please let me know.

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Out of Russia: Flag of Sinuiju Special Administrative Region, Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Such a nice flag you wouldn’t think it’s from North Korea. Gives out a kind of Japanese prefecture vibe (don’t tell them I said that). This tiny region is located on the border next to China, and houses the border crossing by the Sino–Korean Friendship Bridge which connects Sinuiju to Dandong, China. Another interesting fact is it was designated a Special Administrative Region (SAR) as a way to introduce market economics, being the economic buffer between North Korea and China. The term SAR itself you might have heard being used for regions such as Hong Kong and Macau. From what I can tell, it’s been kind of a clusterfuck.

Not too much info on the symbolism of this flag other than that the flower on the flag is a magnolia.

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Flag of Engels, Saratov Oblast

It’s interesting enough that there’s a city in Russia named after the famed Communist figure and Marx bff Friedrich Engels, but the avant garde flag would probably have caught your attention in the first place and boy wait til you hear about the history of this city.

So Engels, the second biggest city in Saratov Oblast, is a port city on the Volga River. As some of you might know, there is a subset of the Russian population that are ethnic Germans who migrated to Russia during the imperial times known as Volga Germans. This city was known as the center of Volga German culture, even assigned as the capital of the Volga German Autonomous Oblast after the revolution until WW2. During that time, because of the Nazi paranoia and Stalin being Stalin, most of these Germans were expelled to Siberian labor camps. Some who survived returned to Engels but most repatriated to Germany. I can’t find the numbers for Engels specifically but the latest census for Saratov Oblast counts the German minorities as 0.3% of the population.

On the flag itself, many unconventional elements of it are references to the coat of arms of Engels, a bull carrying a bowl of salt. It borrows the color scheme of Germany, although not in the right order, because it is related to the bull and bowl of salt, which is also a reason that they chose a chevron shape, that it resembles a bull’s horns turned sideways. On “top” of the black horn is a red bowl, and the diamond shape is supposed to be the salt. Blue obviously stands for the river. 

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Flag of Kurtamysh, Kurgan Oblast

Help! The church is sinking in piss!

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Flag of Bolsechemene rural settlement, Batyrevsky district, Chuvash Republic

I’m impressed at the boldness of the choices made in designing this flag. It looks almost too good to just be the flag of a lower level administrative area, it exudes such a level of confidence fit even for a whole oblast. Pretty daring stuff to have solid red and black as your background, let alone stylized like an X.

The warrior is not an uncommon motif for these regional flags, often they are presented in an intimidating or guarded way, but the posing of this warrior is graceful, almost dancer like .

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Flag of Avanasevsky district, Kirov Oblast

Oh you think the Lyantor bear is sad? This guy looks like he’s been crying all day

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Flag of Mirny (ZАТО), Kholmogorsky district, Arkhangelsk Oblast

A retrofuturist space design? Must’ve been one of those closed science cities that housed top secret space stuff. Well yeah, this is the site of Plesetsk Cosmodrome, where they develop ICBMs and some satellites. The Soviet Union was trying to hide the existence of this launchpad but a British teacher and his students figured it out after observing a rocket launch that doesn’t look like it was launched from Baikonur (remember this place?)

Nowadays Russia tries to use it more to lessen the dependence on Baikonur, but some geographical properties of Mirny makes it somewhat less ideal than Baikonur.

According to the website of the city, the top arrow and star represents the aircraft and a star, lines in the middle for northern lights, and the hexagon is some kind of symbol associated with the Cosmodrome. On the header of the site you can see they have a cool monument of that symbol.

Also, there are several other Mirny in Russia, some with their own flags, but this one is definitely the coolest. When you want to know more about this city, put ZATO or ЗАТО on the search term, which specifies that you’re looking for the closed city

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Flag of Baikonur, Kazakhstan/Russia

There’s a lot of interesting Soviet related things going on in this city that explains this flag, so get ready for a little bit of history lesson.

The reason why I write the location as Kazakhstan/Russia is that while it is geographically located in Kazakhstan, the city is leased to the Russian government (until 2050 actually) as a space launch location for the Russian space program known as the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This was the launching pad used by the Soviet Union to launch their most important projects such as the first ever artificial satellite Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1 which put Yuri Gagarin in history as the first man in space.

As we know, Russia and Kazakhstan used to be one country, and since everything is set up there already and probably too much of a hassle for Russians (whose space program is pretty much a successor to the Soviet one) to build a new launch pad within their borders without halting their program, it was easier to just rent it from the Kazakhs while they construct their own launching pad.

Baikonur was called Leninsk during soviet times, but as a gesture to return its Kazakh roots it was renamed Baikonur in 1995 by Yeltsin of all people.

Kazakhs and science cities tend to have kickass flags but this one is really ruined by the text. Not sure which one to blame on this. Otherwise the symbol is kinda cool although the rocket blast makes the hands look like it's bloody from being chopped off. The blue of the background could’ve been less garish too.

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Flag of Kremyonky, Kaluga Oblast

OK so they just straight up had a member of the Russian imperial family on the flag, but this is actually a really interesting choice. No, this isn’t Catherine the Great, but rather her friend Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, or better known as Princess Dashkova. She is a very bright and talented woman who excelled in the sciences and literature, and was appointed the director of Imperial Academy of Sciences. She is a very interesting character so I recommend reading her wiki page. The history of Kremyonky apparently has ties to the Dashkov family and so they took some of the vexillologic elements of the flag from their coat of arms

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Flag of Gagarin, Gagarin district, Smolensk Oblast

Boats aren’t a new concept in Russian vexillology but why would anyone have sacks of gold operating the boat beats me. Apparently the coat of arms this imagery is based on is given to the city by Catherine the Great.