The national flag is a kind of visiting card of the country, one of its identifying features at various ceremonies. It is assumed that it must be original, different from the flags of all other countries. But the flags of some states are so similar to each other that sometimes even politicians confuse them. This applies, in particular, to the flags of the Russian Federation, Slovenia and Slovakia.
The similarity of the three state flags - Russian, Slovenian and Slovak - is extremely. Both flags have three horizontal stripes - white, blue and red, and even they are arranged in the same order. The only difference between the flags is the coat of arms that are on the Slovenian flag and in the Slovak one, and each of these countries has its own coat of arms. There is no coat of arms on the flag of the Russian Federation.
Where did the colors of the flags come from?
The explanation for the similarity of the flags is to be found in something that unites the three peoples. And Russians, who are the titular nation in the Russian Federation, and Slovaks and Slovenes are Slavic peoples. The Slavic peoples have a common flag - the Pan-Slavic. This flag was adopted at the Slavic Congress held in 1848 in Prague under the chairmanship of the famous Czech historian F. Palacky.
It was a difficult time for the Slavic peoples. On the one hand, they experienced a national revival, the awakening of national identity, on the other, many of them were deprived of national self-determination. Bulgaria and Serbia were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia were under the rule of the Austrian Empire.
Not all, but many congress delegates pinned their hopes on Russia, so the colors of the Russian tricolor were taken as the basis for the Pan-Slavic flag. For Russia itself, it was the flag of merchant ships, approved by Peter I. The Tsar-reformer borrowed the colors of the flag from Holland.
The Pan-Slavic flag includes horizontal stripes of the same colors as the Russian one, but they are located differently: blue, white, red. It was under the tricolor flag that the Slovaks rebelled against Hungary, and Slovenian patriots also used it.
What other peoples use Pan-Slavic colors
The colors of the Pan-Slavic flag, albeit with a different arrangement, can be seen on the state flags of other Slavic countries - Serbia, Croatia, Czech Republic. They were also present on the flag of Yugoslavia. The flag with the same colors was chosen for itself by the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and has kept it now, having become a part of the Russian Federation.
These colors are also used in their flags by those Slavic peoples that today do not have national self-determination and are recognized as ethnic minorities: the Lusatian Serbs in Germany, as well as the Rusyns living in Romania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine.
