Abkhazia Marks the Day of the State Flag
The State Flag of the Republic of Abkhazia, approved on 23 July 1992.
SUKHUM / AQW'A — The flag and coat of arms, from designs by the artist Valery Gamgia, were approved by the Supreme Soviet on 23 July 1992, at the same session that restored the 1925 constitution and gave the country its present name. Georgian troops crossed the Ingur three weeks later.
Abkhazia marks the Day of the State Flag on 23 July, the anniversary of the session at which the Supreme Soviet approved the republic's symbols in 1992. The vote was taken amid open confrontation between the Abkhazian and Georgian factions of deputies, and it belongs to a set of three decisions taken that day which, read together, amounted to a declaration of statehood.
Nothing could be approved while the 1978 constitution of the Abkhazian ASSR remained in force. The deputies first suspended it and restored the 1925 constitution of the SSR of Abkhazia, one article of which described the republic as a sovereign state that would conduct relations with others on a treaty basis. A separate resolution replaced the name Abkhazian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic with Republic of Abkhazia, the name the country carries today. Only then did the flag and the coat of arms follow.
The historian Aslan Avidzba, a doctor of historical sciences, places the decision within the wider confrontation with Georgia, calling it 'a continuation of Abkhazia's struggle for independence and sovereignty' waged under a severe political disadvantage. The commission that developed the symbols was created under the Supreme Soviet, with Gamgia responsible for the designs, and the work was completed shortly before Georgian forces entered Abkhazia. Avidzba argues that none of the three resolutions would have carried the same historical weight in isolation, and that one without the other might not have shaped the course of events as it did.
23 July 1992. Vladislav Ardzinba, serving as the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Abkhaz ASSR, led the parliamentary session in which the Republic of Abkhazia was declared, and its national flag and coat of arms were ratified.
Gamgia brought working versions to the parliamentary commission, whose members made corrections of their own. The final design was approved by Vladislav Ardzinba, then chairman of the Supreme Soviet, after which a silk banner measuring 1.5 metres by 70 centimetres was presented to a popular assembly in Sukhum.
On 14 August 1992, three weeks after the session, troops of the Georgian State Council entered Abkhazia. The war that followed lasted more than a year and cost thousands of lives. From its first days, Abkhazian fighters carried the green and white banner, which became the standard of the struggle for freedom and independence.
The flag itself carries seven horizontal stripes along its length, four green and three white, with green uppermost. A crimson rectangle occupies the upper left corner at the staff, bearing a vertical image of an open white right palm, with seven white five-pointed stars arranged in a semicircle above it.
The open palm on a crimson field is held to be a symbol of Abkhazian statehood dating from the Kingdom of Abkhazia of the 8th to 10th centuries, which would make it some twelve centuries old. The device appears on Genoese sea charts of the 13th to 14th centuries, and a crimson flag bearing a white palm is said to have flown in the first centuries AD over Sebastopolis, on the site of present-day Sukhum. The seven stars stand for the seven principal regions of historical Abkhazia: Sadzen (Dzhigetia), Bzyb, Guma, Abzhywa, Myrzakan, Dal-Tsabal and Pskhu-Aibga.
+ The Story of Abkhazia's Flag: A Symbol of Independence
+ On the Historical Symbolism of the State Flag of the Republic of Abkhazia
President Badra Gunba congratulated citizens on the Day of the State Flag in a message released by his press service, describing the approval of the flag and arms in 1992 as a decisive stage in the formation of the republic's statehood. 'Today the State Flag unites all citizens of the Republic of Abkhazia,' he said, adding that it recalls the history of the people and the price paid for freedom and independence. He expressed confidence that Abkhazia's flag would one day be present in every international organisation, and that the number of states recognising the republic's independence would grow.