A look at the history and symbolism of the Red Banner of the USSR from the September, 1982 issue of Socialism: Principles, Practice, Prospects:
The red flag is the state standard of the Soviet Union and a symbol of its sovereignty. The Soviet people’s respect for their state is manifest in their reverence for its flag. Usually it is hoisted over buildings housing the main bodies of state power in the USSR and outside it–over Soviet embassies, consulates, trade and other missions. Inside the country state flags decorate streets during official state holidays, on Lenin’s birthday, as well as festive demonstrations of the working people.
The history of the red flag was forged in the crucible of the dramatic struggle. Those who raised the red flag were thrown In prison.
On July 44, 1789 insurgent Parisians hoisted a red flag over the Bastille, the bulwark of feudal France. This marked the beginning of the Great French Revolution. In 1832 insurgent Parisians again raised the red banner which has since become a symbol of revolution. In 1848 red flags heralded the birth of the French Republic and the revolutions in Germany, Austria and Italy.
On May 19, 1849 the last issue of the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” edited by Marx was put out. It was printed in red type. In their last address to readers the Editors said prophetically that, following the defeat, the Republic’s flag streaming over Paris remained unvanquished and even fifty defeats, let alone one, would never crush the world workers’ confidence in the victory which the flag epitomized.
In 1871 the red banner again led the French in a struggle that culminated in the establishment of the Paris Commune. the world’s first state of proletarian dictatorship. Paris Communards with a red banner stormed the skies, to quote Marx, struggled against the exploiter system. Red flags flew over the Commune’s state institutions, thus symbolizing the new power.
The red flag then became a state flag–for the first time in history. The Commune’s enemies gunned at it and made gallows ropes from it–also for the first time ever. Ninety seven years later a red bow made from the last flag at the Communards’ last barricade went to space aboard a Soviet spaceship.
In Russia, a red flag was first raised in the 17th century during a peasant revolt. Later it became a symbol of the struggle waged by the democratic forces against the autocracy.
In 1903, when the first democratic revolution began in Russia, the first Workers’ Soviets were formed in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, with the red flag as their symbol. The insurgent sailors of the Battleship –“Potemkin” raised it at sea (summer of 1905). In 1905-1907, all of Russia’s revolutionary forces rallied round the red banner. As Lenin wrote then, this banner will rise higher and higher and unite the working and exploited people everywhere.
Under this banner the workers of Russia overthrew the capitalist regime in October 1917. As decreed by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on April 8, 1918, “The red banner bearing the inscription 'The Russian Federative Republic’ shall be the Flag of the Russian Republic.”
A booklet for army readership at the time of the Civil War ('1918-1920) said in part: “Workers and peasants received their freedom, their rights, their land, their unions and their newspapers in the sanguine struggle against the landlords and capitalists and coloured banners with their blood, as it were. Hence the colour of our banner is the colour of our blood.”
The red colour of our Soviet State Flag symbolizes the people's heroic struggle for a new, communist society.
From the magazine Sobytiya i faktu (Events and Facts)
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