![]() Scenes from Sunday night’s post-election crackdown in Minsk, Belarus.‘My conscience is clear’ Belarusian police officers start publicly resigning in protest against violent crackdown on opposition.First moments of freedom Protesters in custody in Minsk were released en masse last night. ![]() ‘Stop the violence’ Snapshots from yesterday’s peaceful demonstrations in Belarus.However, during a referendum in 1995, the majority of Belarusian citizens voted for the restoration of the Soviet era red over green bicolor, without the hammer and sickle (in addition to some other minor changes). Meanwhile, the white-red-white flag remained in use among émigré organizations.Īfter the collapse of the USSR, independent Belarus adopted the white-and-red tricolor once again. During the Soviet period, the official flag of the Byelorussian SSR was initially a plain red one, but it ended up as a red-and-green one with a decorative pattern on the left side and a golden hammer and sickle. Nevertheless, the flag finally took root as a national symbol. The republic lasted for just a few months and most of its territory was occupied by the Germans (World War I was still ongoing at the time). ![]() The Belarusian People’s Republic (BNR) was declared in March 1918, and the white-red-white tricolor became its national flag. In some photographs, there are two dark stripes (supposedly either dark red or black) on either side of the red center stripe, instead of white ones (the photographs themselves are in black and white, so they can’t be used to establish the flag’s exact colors). In 1917, Russia’s February Revolution gave a powerful impetus to the Belarusian national movement, the first legal congresses of its organizations were held under this flag. Some modern researchers claim that this pattern can be found on the banners that troops of Belarusian origin fought under at the time of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (which dates back to the 13th century) and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795). The flag’s designer is believed to be architect and engineer Klawdziy Duzh-Dushewski (1891–1959), although this has never been a completely established fact. ![]() At the turn of the 19th–20th century, a cloth with this pattern was used among the first Belarusian nationalist circles and associations. Nataliya Fedosenko / TASS / Scanpix / LETA Where does the white-and-red flag come from?Ī white flag with a red stripe down the middle was the official flag of Belarus for several years, historically speaking. ![]()
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