 | |
| Триколор (lit. 'tricolour') | |
| Use | Civil and state flag, civil and state ensign    |
|---|---|
| Proportion | 2:3 |
| Adopted | 1705–1922
1991–present
|
| Design | Horizontal tricolour of white, blue, and red |
| Designed by | Peter the Great |
The national flag of the Russian Federation (Russian: Государственный флаг Российской Федерации, Gosudarstvenny flag Rossiyskoy Federatsii) is a tricolour of three equal horizontal bands: white on the top, blue in the middle, and red on the bottom.
The design was first introduced by Tsar Peter the Great in 1693, and in 1705 it was adopted as the civil ensign of the Tsardom of Russia; the flag continued to be used as a civil ensign under the Russian Empire. In 1858, Emperor Alexander II declared the black-yellow-white tricolour as the national flag, and in 1896 it was replaced by the white-blue-red tricolour by Nicholas II. In 1917, following the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks banned the tricolour, though it continued to be flown by the White movement during the Russian Civil War. The flag of the Russian SFSR was a red field with its Cyrillic acronym "РСФСР" in the upper-left corner, and after 1954, was a red field with a vertical blue stripe on the left and a gold hammer and sickle.
Shortly after the August Coup in 1991, the Russian SFSR adopted the imperial tricolour as the national flag of Russia, although with slightly different dimensions and colour shades than the current version. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of year, the newly independent Russian Federation inherited the redesigned flag, and its current proportions and shades were specified by President Boris Yeltsin in 1993.