Flag of Georgia (country)

Georgia
Name Five Cross Flag
Use Civil and state flag, civil and state ensign
Proportion 2:3
Adopted January 24-25, 2004
Design White rectangle, with in its central portion a large red cross that extends to the edge of the flag. In the four corners there are four Bolnur-Katskhuri crosses of the same color.[1]

Variant flag of Georgia
Use Naval ensign
Design Flag of the President of Georgia

Variant flag of Georgia
Design Flag of the Minister of Defence

Variant flag of Georgia
Design Flag of the Chief of the General Staff

Variant flag of Georgia
Design War Flag of Georgia

The flag of Georgia (Georgian: საქართველოს სახელმწიფო დროშა; sakartvelos sakhelmtsʼipo drosha), also known as the Five Cross Flag (Georgian: ხუთჯვრიანი დროშა; khutjvriani drosha), is one of the national symbols of the republic. Originally a banner of the medieval Kingdom of Georgia, it was brought back to popular use in the late 20th and early 21st centuries during periods of the Georgian national revival. Prior to obtaining its official status in 2004, the flag was popularized by the United National Movement and served as one of the most recognizable symbols of the Rose Revolution.

History

The current flag was used by the Georgian patriotic movement following the country's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. By the late 1990s, the design had become widely known as 'the Georgian historical national flag' as vexillologists had pointed out the red-on-white Jerusalem cross shown as the flag of Tbilisi in a 14th-century map by Domenico and Francesco Pizzigano.[2]

A majority of Georgians, including the influential Catholicos-Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, supported the restoration of the flag and in 1999 the Parliament of Georgia passed a bill to change the flag. However, it was not endorsed by the President, Eduard Shevardnadze. It was adopted in the early 2000s by the main opposition party, the United National Movement led by Mikheil Saakashvili, as a symbol of popular resistance to Shevardnadze's rule.[3]

The flag was adopted by Parliament on 14 January 2004. Saakashvili formally endorsed it via Presidential Decree No. 31 signed on 25 January, following his election as President. 14 January is annually marked as a Flag Day in Georgia.

Design

The national flag of Georgia, as described in the decree:

The Georgian national flag is a white rectangle, with in its central portion a large red cross touching all four sides of the flag. In the four corners there are four bolnur-katskhuri crosses of the same color (as the large cross).

Scheme Red White
RGB 255-0-0 255-255-255
CMYK 0-100-100-0 0-0-0-0
Web #FF0000 #FFFFFF
Flag construction sheet

Previous flags of Georgia

The five crosses on the current Georgian flag are sometimes interpreted as representing either the Five Holy Wounds, or alternatively Christ and the Four Evangelists.[4]

Medieval Georgian flags

Detail of the 1367 Pizzigano chart, showing Tbilisi and its flag

The white flag with the single red St. George's cross was supposedly used by King Vakhtang I in the 5th century.[5]

According to tradition, Queen Tamar (d. 1213) used a flag with a dark red cross and a star in a white field.[6]

In the 1367 map by Domenico and Francesco Pizzigano, the flag of Tifilis (Tbilisi) is shown as a Jerusalem cross (a large cross with smaller crosses in each quarter). According to D. Kldiashvili (1997), the Jerusalem cross might have been adopted during the reign of King George V.[7]

Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918–1921)

During Georgia's brief existence as an independent state as the Democratic Republic of Georgia from 1918 to 1921, a tricolour was adopted. The design resulted from a national flag-designing contest won by the painter Iakob Nikoladze. It was abolished by the Soviet Union following the 1921 incorporation of Georgia into the USSR.

Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (1921–1991)

During the Soviet period, Georgia adopted several variants of the red Soviet flag incorporating either the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic's name, or a red hammer and sickle with a star in a blue sun in the canton and blue bar in the upper part of flag. The flag of Georgian SSR was abolished by the Georgian government in November 1990 shortly before it declared independence from the Soviet Union.

Georgia (1991–2004)

The previous flag used by the Democratic Republic of Georgia from 1918 to 1921 was revived on 8 December 1991, by the Supreme Council of the Republic of Georgia. However, it lost popularity thereafter as it became associated with the chaotic and violent period around the collapse of the Soviet Union. The wine-red colour symbolises the good times in the past and the future, while the black represents Russian rule, and the white represents hope for peace.[8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Decree of the President of Georgia No. 32 of 25 January 2004.
  2. ↑ "The new flag of Georgia does not seem to be related with this historical banner. The flag of the National Movement was unknown ten years ago [1993] and was called 'the Georgian historical national flag' by the opposition leaders only after publications by the Georgian vexillologist I.L. Bichikashvili." Mikhail Revnivtsev, 25 November 2003 crwflags.com
  3. ↑ "A majority of Georgians, including the patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, have long favored adopting the five-cross banner as the nation's official flag. But the outgoing president stymied all efforts to make the change. In 1999, the Georgian Parliament voted to change the flag, and all Shevardnadze had to do was issue a supportive Decree. Inexplicably, he refused to do so, instead setting up a powerless Heraldic Commission to study the matter. When Saakashvili founded the National Movement in 2001, therefore, the five-cross flag was the natural choice to illustrate his party's populist bent." Brendan Koerner, 'What's With Georgia's Flags?', Slate, 25 November 2003.
  4. ↑ Michael Spilling, Winnie Wong: Georgia p. 37.
  5. ↑ Theodore E. Dowling, Sketches of Georgian Church History, New York, p 54. D.M.Lang – Georgia in the Reign of Giorgi the Brilliant (1314–1346). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 17,No. 1 (1955), p.84. G. Macharashwili დროშა გორგასლიანი, თბ. 2011.
  6. ↑ "Georgia.". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2013-02-14..
  7. ↑ David Kldiashvili, ქართული ჰერალდიკის ისტორია ("History of Georgian heraldry"), Parlamentis utskebani, 1997; pp. 30–35.
  8. ↑ Steve Luck, ed. (1997). Oxford Family Encyclopedia (first ed.). London: George Philip. p. 281. ISBN 0-19-521367-X.
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