WikipediaExtracts:Flag of Russia
Extracted from Wikipedia --
The national flag of the Russian Federation (Russian: Государственный флаг Российской Федерации Gosudarstvenny flag Rossiyskoy Federatsii) is a tricolour of three equal horizontal fields: white on the top, blue in the middle, and red on the bottom. It was first raised in 1696, as an ensign for merchant ships under the Tsardom of Russia.
After just over a century and a half of usage, uninterrupted by the proclamation of the Russian Empire, the flag was replaced by Black-yellow-white flag following a decree by Alexander II in 1858. However, a decree by Nicholas II in 1896 reinstated the white, blue, and red tricolour as the Russian national flag.
In 1917, with the establishment of the Russian SFSR after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks banned the traditional Russian tricolour, though it continued to be flown by the White Movement during the Russian Civil War. The Russian tricolour was unused for most of the 20th century; the Soviet Union deviated from predecessor flag designs by using a plain red flag with a yellow hammer-and-sickle canton.
Shortly after the August Coup in 1991, the Russian SFSR adopted a new flag design similar to the Russian imperial tricolour, though with different dimensions and colour shades. The new flag's ratio was 1:2, and the colours consisted of white on the top, blue in the middle, and red on the bottom. Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the newly independent Russian Federation inherited the redesigned flag of the Russian SFSR, and the specifications were formalised by Boris Yeltsin in the State Heraldic Register. The flag design remained the same until 1993, when the original Russian tricolour was fully restored as the current flag after the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis.
