Armenia Flag

Name	Armenian Tricolour
Designer	Stepan Malkhasyants
Adopted	24 August 1990
Proportion	1 : 2 (width : length)
Flag day	15 June
Description	The national flag of Armenia consists of three horizontal bands of equal width, red on the top, blue in the middle, and orange on the bottom.

Armenia proclaimed its independence on May 28, 1918, and the independent Armenian government of the First Republic of Armenia adopted red-blue-orange tricolor as its official national flag on August 1, 1918.

As a republic of the USSR, the Armenian SSR introduced its first flag in 1936. Very similar to the flag of the Soviet Union, it was red and featured a yellow hammer and sickle on a red field. Underneath that, there were "H-Kh-S-H" initials written in Armenian serif script. These initials, in the Western Armenian language, stand for Haygagan Khorhurtayin Sodzialistakan Hanrabedutyun, or the "Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic". In the 1940s, the flag was altered to use the Eastern Armenian language spoken in the Republic. The initials were changed to "H-S-S-R" meaning "Hayastani Sovetakan Sotsialistikakan Respublika" in the Eastern Armenian pronunciation. In 1952, a new flag was introduced. The initials were removed completely and in their place a horizontal blue stripe was added. Following Armenia's independence from the USSR, the red-blue-orange tricolor flag was officially readopted on August 24, 1990.