Tuva (Russian Federation)

Last modified: 1997-09-03 by zeljko heimer
Keywords: tuva | russian federation |
Links: FOTW homepage | search | disclaimer and copyright | write us | mirrors

• Presentation of Tuva
• Flags of Tuva
• Flags of Independant Tuva 1921-1944

See also:

• Russian Federation
• Information on Tuva (large GIF of the flag, national emblem in No. 8 of the newsletter).
• alt.culture.tuva USENET Tuva discusion group
• A Web site for Tuva

Presentation of Tuva

Full name: Republic of Tuva
Location: northern Mongolia
Status: Constituent republic of the Russian Federation.

Notes: Tuva broke away from Mongolia in 1921, and retained its independence until incorporation into the USSR in 1944. In 1961, it became an ASSR. In 1992, a new flag of light blue, yellow and white was adopted. (Apparently, the mono version of this flag which I posted some months ago was the wrong way round - the triangle should be in the fly and not in the hoist).

stuart notholt 25-NOV-1995

Tuva is currently an autonomous republic of Russia, but was previously independent (in the twenties, I think). The area is near the border between Siberia and Mongolia, and is also claimed by China (I think that Taiwan even has a representative in their legislature for Tuva, or at least they used to).

annie platoff

Flags of Tuva

From "Vexilla Italica",2,XX (1993):

"From 18-SEP-1992 Tuva has a blue flag, yellow near the pole, crossed by a layed Y"

I'm still confused about the direction of the Tuva flag. I read through several issues of _The Friends of Tuva newsletter_, and found mention (as well as pictures) of the flag in several issues. In the eighth issue, dated Fall, 1993, the direction of the flag was specified as:

'The triangle on the Tuvan flag borders the flagpole, ...'

Flags of Indepenadnt Tuva 1921-1944

There is a very good article about Tuvan flags in "Flag Bulletin", no. 100, pp 189-197.
It seems that Tuva was using 4 flags (not bad for 23 years of statehoood). They were all plain red. The first two had the coat of arms in the center, the two others had only the country's initials in gold in the upper hoist corner: the full name is "Tyva Arat Respublik" (People's Republic of Tuva), so its initials are TAR. But here, the story gets complicated: Tuva not only had 4 flags, it also had 3 alphabets. On the very first flag there is writing in the original Uighur (similar to old Mongolian). Then a second alphabet was introduced which was based on Latin, so the initials really read "TAR": that's flag number 3. A couple of years later, for obvious reasons, the alphabet was redesigned and based on Cyrillic. So the initials now look like "TAP": flag number 4.