Flags of Russia

Flag of Spas-Zagore, Maloyaroslavets district, Kaluga Oblast

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.

Flag of Zvyozdny gorodok urban settlement, Moscow Oblast 

Flag of Solikamsk, Perm Krai

Flag of Chagodoshchensky district, Vologda Oblast

Flag of  Bolsherechensky, Irkutsk district, Irkutsk Oblast 

Flag of Lotoshino, Moscow Oblast

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

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.

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.

Flag of Kurtamysh, Kurgan Oblast

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.

Flag of Avanasevsky district, Kirov Oblast

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.

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.

Flag of Kremyonky, Kaluga Oblast

Flag of Gagarin, Gagarin district, Smolensk Oblast