Last modified: 2022-03-19 by rob raeside
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![[1918-1919 Civil War Republican Cross-Trident flag]](../images/u/ua_19189.jpg)
image located by Bill Garrison, 24 February 2022
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This flag was posted on eBay. The letters in the Narbut font and the manner of the image of the trident indicate that the flag was made no earlier than the end of 1918 and beginning of 1919. Under the influence of the introduction of the UNR naval flag, similar flags with the image of a trident with a cross began to be used by ground forces.
Commentary by the flag's eBay seller:
In 1917 the Ukrainian state was
reborn after centuries of hibernation. State-building processes began and the
Ukrainian nation demanded a symbol that would associate the new young state with
the state of their ancestors.
As the main symbol of Ukraine, D.
Antonovich proposed to place on the blue strip a golden sign of Prince Volodymyr
with a cross above. But some members of the Central Rada did not agree and made
a request to remove the cross. Categorically refused to support the proposals of
Antonovich and his fierce opponent V. Vinnichenko, who did not hide his
pro-communist preferences. In response, Mykhailo Bilynsky, who later became the
Rear Admiral and Minister of Marine Affairs of the UNR, and other members of the
General Maritime Council stated that Ukrainian sailors would simply not go to
sea without the cross. Against such an argument the words of the Socialists have
fallen short. The struggle for the trident with the cross was a success.
As mentioned later by the former Deputy Minister of Maritime Affairs of the UNR
and the head of the commission at the Ministry of Maritime Affairs for the
development of Ukrainian state flags Svyatoslav Shramchenko (1893 - 1958), the
cross on the trident and flags was also important to them as a "tradition that
comes from the cross that was on the Zaporozhian flags, under which they sailed
across the Black Sea in the days of a glorious past".
Under the influence of
the introduction of the UNR naval flag, similar flags with the image of a
trident with a cross began to be used by ground forces. Very soon the trident
with the cross, like a thousand years before, became a symbol of the Ukrainian
State and its Army again.
Our research indicates that this flag was the flag
of the Ukrainian Republican troops or some guerrilla unit that supported the
idea of Ukrainian independence. The letters in the Narbut font and the manner
of the image of the trident indicate that the flag was made no earlier than the
end of 1918 and beginning of 1919. A large ornamental cross with a trident in
the form of an anchor indicates that the flag was made by the hands of a
Ukrainian military, possibly a former Black Sea Fleet sailor.
Bill Garrison, 24 February 2022