Russia Flag & Anthem

Flag The flag of Russia (Russian: Флаг России) is a tricolor flag consisting of three equal horizontal fields: white on the top, blue in the middle, and red on the bottom. The flag was first used as an ensign for Russian merchant ships and became official as the flag of the Tsardom of Russia in 1696. It remained in use until the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR) in 1917. During the Soviet Union&existence, it used a flag with a red field with a golden hammer and sickle and a golden bordered red star on top. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the pre-revolutionary tricolor was re-introduced as the flag of the Russian Federation in 1991 in the 1:2 ratio. The Tsarist tricolor was fully restored in 1993 after the constitutional crisis as the current flag. Anthem The "State Anthem of the Russian Federation" (Russian: Госуда́рственный гимн Росси́йской Федера́ции, tr. Gosudárstvennyj gimn Rossíjskoj Federácii, IPA: [ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪnɨj ˈɡʲimn rɐˈsʲijskəj fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨj]) is the name of the official national anthem of Russia. It uses the same music as the State Anthem of the Soviet Union, composed by Alexander Alexandrov, and new lyrics by Sergey Mikhalkov, who had collaborated with Gabriel El-Registan on the original anthem. From 1944, that earliest version replaced "The Internationale", as a new, more Soviet-centric, and Russia-centric Soviet anthem. The same melody, but without lyrics mentioning dead Stalin by name, was used after 1956.