Last modified: 2005-05-13 by antónio martins
Keywords: dimensions | construction | hammer and sickle | different reverse |
Links: FOTW homepage |
search |
disclaimer and copyright |
write us |
mirrors
Reverse side of the soviet flag (at least since 1977) was plain red.
Victor Lomantsov, 08 Nov 2001
According to the Soviet Constitution of 1980, the reverse is plain red. This is actually expliceted not on the text (which is scarce in construction details) but on the color plate and on the b/w construction sheet, that shows the obverse with the h&s+star device on the top hoist and the obverse completely red (obverse and reverse are illustrated by showing a spearpointed pole: obverse shows the pole at the viewerʼs left hand and the reverse shows the pole at the viewerʼs right hand).
Please note that this is so in the 1980 version of the constitution, but it doesnʼt meant that this was not taken without change from previous versions. So the soviet flag might have had a plain red background before 1980 (and probably it did). The colour plate (on whose backside is printed the b/w construction sheet) is said to have been published by decree of the Preasidium of the Supreme Soviet on 1980.08.15, although the preambulum of the Constitution (whose section VIII deals with the arms, flag, anthem and capital of the Soviet Union), was approved on 1977.10.07.
António Martins, 10 Dec 1999
No hammer, sickle and star on reverse side
[applies to all SSRsʼ
flags and their derivatives].
Mark Sensen, 25 May 1997
The USSR flag had in front a hammer and sickle and the back was a plain red flag with nothing on it. Iʼll admit that I had a bit of trouble finding a written reference again when I needed it, but from Websterʼs Concise Encyclopedia of Flags & Coats of Arms [mch85a]:
The flag was approved in 1923 and finally settled in 1924; the shape of the hammer and sickle was slightly corrected and exactly prescribed in 1955. In 1980 it was stipulated that the hammer, the sickle and the star appear only on the obverse side of the flag, the reverse being all red.Iʼve seen (and probably own) flags made following this regulation and others ignoring it completely.
Not all the SU flag were made according to those specifications, so I
am sure that there would be some found with H&S on reverse too.
Željko Heimer, 08 Nov 2001
In May 1985, I accompanied my brother on a California lawyers two week continuing education tour of four cities in the Soviet Union (Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, and Leningrad). In all those places, of course flags were in evidence. And we were in the crowd of foreigners in from of the Hotel Metropole for the 9th May Victory Day Parade, where flags were more than numerous. Also, a boat trip on the Dneiper in Kiev, the crowded Space Park across from the Hotel Kosmos in Moscow, war memorials in Mink and Kiev (“The Mother of the Ukraine”, an amazing statute), at the Hermitage and Puskin Museum in Leningrad, in all those places many flags