Soviet Armenia

On November 29 1920 the Revolutionary Committee (revcom) was formed and then Soviet rule was established in Armenia. Next day the Socialist Soviet Republic of Armenia (SSRA) was declared. The Constitution, adopted by the First Session of the Council of Armenia on February 1922, approved the description of the flag.

The flag of Armenia was a “purple-red” cloth with golden letters “SSRA” or the full name of the country “Socialist Soviet Republic of Armenia”. Perhaps the embroideries were supposed to be made in the Armenian language (however, only versions with abbreviations in Armenian are available).

The picture of the Armenian SSR of 1922 available in K.A. Ivanov’s book “Flags of World States” (Moscow, 1971) is a wrong reconstruction according to the Russian text of the Constitution of the Armenian SSR of 1922.

Already on March 12 1922 Armenian entered the Federal Union of Socialist Soviet Republics of Caucasus (FUSSRC), which transformed into the Transcaucasian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (SSFSR) on December 13 1922, and later on December 30 1922 it joined the RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (SSSR).

The 1927 Constitution defined the flag to be:

Article 106. The state flag of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Armenia consists of a red (purple) cloth with the golden letters “SSRA” displaced in the left corner near the flagstaff

On 23 March 1937 the extraordinary IX Congress of the Council of Armenia adopted a new Constitution according to which the Socialist Soviet Republic of Armenia was renamed into the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. It seceded the Transcaucasian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic and was directly included into the USSR. Thus, according to the 1937 Constitution (Article 121), the flag of the Armenian SSR now was a red cloth with a golden hammer and sickle and the abbreviation of the republic’s name in Armenian. The sequence of the words “socialist” and “soviet” was changed on the flag, resulting in change of the abbreviation. The proportion of the flag was established to be 1:2.

In the 1940s the orthography of the abbreviations changed. The government was considering which word in the Armenian language corresponds the term “republic” better. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR of September 6 1940, orthography of the concepts “soviet” and “republic” was “internationalized” (the title of the Armenian SSR sounded like this: “ Haykakan Sovetakan Sotsialistakan Respublica”). This title was reflected in the flag and the coat of arms of the Armenian SSR.

On December 17 1952 the new flag of Armenia was established by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR. Now it was a red cloth with a blue stripe (its width equaled to the ¼ of the flag) in the middle – full length, in the left corner, near the flagstaff a hammer and sickle and a red five-point star encircled in a golden line. The proportion of the width and length of the flag was 1:2.

The blue color was explained (non-officially) as the color of Lake Sevan and Armenia’s rivers.

The Decree of the PSC was ratified by Supreme Council on September 1 1953 and immediately corresponding amendments were made in the Constitution. The Regulations were approved by the Supreme Council on September 30 1967.

The new Constitution of Armenia (1978) the state flag was described as:

“Article 167. the state flag of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic is a red rectangle with a full-length blue stripe in the middle. On the upper red part of the cloth, near the flagstaff, a golden hammer and sickle is depicted with a red five-point star encircled in a golden line. The proportion of the width and length of the flag was 1:2.

Military flags of the Armenian SSR

The 76th Armenian mountain infantry division after Voroshilov, recruited in the Transcaucasus, became “of the Guards” and was renamed into the “51st Red Guard Infantry Division after K.M. Voroshilov”. The division received the honorary title of “Vitebsk” after it had destroyed a major fascist group near Vitebsk in 1944.

The Division had a traditional guards’ flag characteristic of the Soviet army regiments.