Last modified: 2000-01-14 by antonio martins
Keywords: russia | coat of arms | heraldry | eagle | saint george |
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![[Russian Coat of Arms]](../misc/ru).gif)
Editor's Note: The original scan of the Coat of Arms posted by António Martins on 03 Dec 1997 may be found at ftp://ftp.vexillopolis.com/pub/fotw/arms/
The current Russian coat of arms differs from the imperial
one. Now it is red with a golden eagle, back
then the shield was golden with a black eagle.
And there are neither the chain of St. Andrew Order, nor the
six arms on the wings anymore.
Carsten Linke, 02 May 1996, and
Norman M. Martin, 05 Dec 1997
Another difference between the current coat of arms
of the Russian Federation and the coat of arms of Imperial
Russia is that today, the centre arms of St. George is
mirrored. The “czarist” knight shows his left flank, riding
to the heraldic right side; modern St. George is seen from
the opposite side, riding to the left.
Stephan Gorski, 28 Sep 1998
The brown colors [on the image above] should be
gold, that's a scan artifact. When
real (not CMYK) silver and gold is used in printing,
scanning renders it as respectively gray and brown...
António Martins, 04 Dec 1997
The Russian coat of arms is formally the golden eagle
and all it's charges on a red shield (with no other
elements) — much the same way that the Imperial CoA (before
1917) was the black eagle (with slightly
different charges) on a golden
shield.
António Martins, 01 Apr 1999
In Meyers Konversations-Lexikon
1889 I found the following description of the Russian
coat of arms:
On a golden shield a black, twoheaded, triple-crowned eagle with red beak and talons and spreaded out wings, holding the golden sceptre in his right, the golden imperial orb in his left talon; on the breast the Moscow coat of arms: St. George on horseback, piercing the lime worm [?, unsure translation of 'Lindwurm', C.L.]. On every wing of the eagle there are three shields: the coat of arms of Astrakhan, Novgorod and Kiev on the right, the arms of Siberia, Kazan and Vladimir on the left one. The eagle is surrounded by the chain of the St. Andrew Order and headed by the imperial crown with two blue bands bordered golden.
Further it said, that the coat of arms was adopted in 1497 by Tsar Ivan III, who took the Byzantinian twoheaded eagle and improved it with the arms of Moscow.
Carsten Linke, 02 May 1996
The two major symbolic elements of Russian vexillography [the two-headed eagle and St. George slaying the dragon] which predate Peter I [the Great] were both considered Russian state arms. The older form (a mounted dragon slayer known as George the Victorious) was always associated with the Grand Duchy of Moscovy, later becoming the official arms of the city of Moscow. The earliest graphic representation of a rider with a spear (1390) figures in a seal of the prince of Moscow, Vasilii Dimitriyevich. The serpent or dragon was added under Ivan III (1462-1505), probably to represent the Christians of Russia defeating the pagan hordes of the east -- Russia's traditional enemy, the Tatars.
The familiar Russian double-headed eagle was in fact a foreign symbol, adopted to demonstrate the imperial pretensions of the Russian Tsars beginning with Ivan III (the Great) in 1497. ... Ivan married Zoe Paleolog whose uncle Constantine had been the last Byzantine emperor. ... From 1497 on the double-headed eagle proclaimed Russian sovereignty over East and West...
Nick Artimovich 06 May 1996, quoting [smi75b]I have seen the Russian coat of arms displayed both with and without a
shield behind the eagle. I believe that this is true for all the
eagle-arms that stem from Roman Imperial Eagle. At least I am sure
for Austro-Hungarian one, which was more often represented without
the (yellow) shield behind it then with it. I believe it is also
true of German arms, and most of arms of kingdoms in Balkan.
Zeljko Heimer, 06 Dec 1997,
and Ossi Raivio, 05 Dec 1997
The arms on the wings of the russian imperial arms are (clockwise starting from the heads):
Known from seals dated between 1390 and 1423 the knight (without the
dragon) appeared together the eagle on the seal of Ivan III in 1497. One
figure was on the obverse, the other on the reverse of the seal. It is
likely that the knight represented the czar himself, in the Byzantine
meaning of Imperator debellator hostium. Because he was represented
killing the dragon, this lead to identificate him in S. George, but in
the description of the seal of Ivan IV (1562) it is still said "a man on
a horse". Still the 1667 official blasoning of the coat of arms says of
him as the “heir” [of the Byzantine throne]. Following modern russian
heralds (f.e. Elena I. Kamanceva) the knight was the "symbolic
representation of russian wars in defending the homeland from the
enemies". The main colors were blue for the knight dress, white for the
horse and red for the background. So it is likely that white, blue and
red colors derived, as in many other cases, from the coat of arms.
(Sources: [zig94],
[sto74] and
[fow69].)
Mario Fabretto, 27 Nov 1998