Guide To Honorary Revolutionary Red Banner 1920-24

[DougD]

I am working on a basic guide to Soviet Unit flags from the different eras. The first will be the era of the Russian Civil War. I am not going to be able to do all the odd variations of the RCW era, so am trying to just the the "regulation" flags of the Red Army.

The first real Red Army unit flag was the Honorary Revolutionary Red Banner, first issued without any real decree in 1918. By 1920, the regulations came about that actually placed the HRRB as a decreed unit award (individual awards were still a bit frowned upon).

In 1920 the Central Committee decided on the HRRB as the first “official” unit award and even had the organization initials on the banners themselves (VT s IK). What makes the HRRB such an interesting unit flag is that it was not simply issued to all units, but rather it was an award. The only real follow up to that would be the Guards unit flags of WWII; they had to be earned as well.

Even with this regulation, the design of early unit flags from 1918-1924 varied incredibly, though it is not my intention to cover all of them here. Rather, i will just stick to the ‘official’ unit flags. This however, does not mean that all HRRB were the same; they varied quite a bit as well.

As far as I know there are only a handfull of these outside museums; one HRRB outside of a Russian / Soviet museum. It is shown here, for the Voronezh Red Commanders School, the students at which fought bravely against the whites and were awarded this unit flag in 1920 (Red Army schools were issued unit flags).

Made of heavy red velvet, with hand done embroidery, the front side shows the early Red Army star, with Hammer and Plow device. The rear is unique, as it shows a factory (located in Voronezh?) and two workers breaking their chains of oppression. This is the only example I know of were an HRRB has a hand painted scene on it.