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Published by RIA Novosti News Agency (Russian)
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Wednesday, 08 June 2005 |
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Crowned Eagle In depth analysis of Russia's Official Emblem, the Double Headed Eagle. "...Russia's last emperor, Nikolai II, considered it necessary to declare once again that Russia had reached its limits and ordered the emblem to be decorated with symbols of peace. The eagle's wings were decorated with the emblems of the states annexed by Russia: the Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberian, Polish, and Finnish kingdoms and the Tauric Chersonese. It seemed enough. It seemed that the heavy golden bird would never again fly in the sky of war. But Russian history took a sharp turn. After the 1917 October revolution, the old emblem was abolished and a new emblem of the Soviet Union appeared. It depicted the Earth (although only its upper part was seen well) with a radiating sun rising above it. Above the Earth there was a symbol of the proletarian and peasant expansion, a sickle and hammer under a five-pointed star of mystic might. This symbolized the center of an expanding universe. This emblem of the Communist state claimed power over the entire world. But history decided otherwise, and the Soviet empire collapsed. The current emblem [Double Eagle] was born in the pangs of new times. At first the previous emblem was restored but deprived of all crowns and symbols of power, including the scepter and the orb. Its two beaks were closed. Critics immediately dubbed the eagle "a shabby hen" and soon painter Yevgeny Ukhnalev reinstated almost all of the previous attributes. Russia's new emblem was officially adopted in December 2000. Today this emblem, the symbol of a democratic federal republic, looks ironically like that of a monarchy, with all the attributes of tsarist power having been restored. However, the symbols have different meanings...."
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