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Republic of Macedonia (Socialist Yugoslavia)

Flag of Socialist Macedonia - Image by Željko Heimer, 10 February 2013

Flag of Socialist Macedonia
Early variants of the flag
Variant of the flag with a "fat star"
Coat of arms of Socialist Macedonia

See also:

Flag of Socialist Macedonia

Macedonia (People's Republic of, Narodna Republika Makedonija, until 1963; then Socialist Republic, Socijalistička Republika Makedonija until 1991) used a red flag with a yellow outlined star in canton.
This flag was adopted on 31 December 1946, and superseded by the Vergina sun flag in 1992.

Construction sheet - Image by Željko Heimer, 10 February 2013

The flag is described in Article 9 of the 1963 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (scan), published on 12 April 1963 in the official gazette Služben vestnik SRM, No. 24, as follows:

The flag of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia is red with a five-pointed star. The star is red with a golden (yellow) edge and it has a regular five-pointed shape. The ratio of width to height of the flag is one to two.
If the flag is divided into four rectangles, then the central point of the star shall match the point where the diagonals of the top hoist rectangle intersect. The top ray of the star is pointed towards the top line of the length of the flag and the bottom rays are pointing towards the bottom line of the length of the flag. The radius of the star is equal to one sixth of the width of the flag.

Most probably, the description was simply copied word for word from the 1946 Constitution of the People's Republic of Macedonia) and was retained in the subsequent, 1974 Constitution.
The same flag was used, displayed vertically, as early as 26 September 1943 (photo).

The size of the star varied. Officially it was much smaller than the stars on the flags of the other Republics, but usually - when displayed together with the rest of them - was enlarged to that size. Sometimes the star was put in the middle, but that was wrong.

Željko Heimer, 10 February 2013

In August 1903, during the Ilinden Uprising, a plain red flag was hoisted in the liberated town of Kruševo. That was done at the initiative of Nikola Karev, a leader of the uprising and the chief organizer of the provisional administration of the Republic of Kruševo, who was a Socialist activist. The red flag, originally a symbol of Socialism and revolution, thus also became the Macedonian national symbol. This was probably helped with the fact that the coat of arms usually attributed to Macedonia has had the red field, with the golden lion upon it.

In 1946, the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia adopted the flag with the red field, in memory of the Ilinden Uprising and the Republic of Kruševo. As an independent country, Macedonia has kept the red as the field colour of its flag to this day. Red is also the field colour of many political flags in Macedonia, regardless of the users' political attitudes, being used there as the national symbol.

Tomislav Todorović, 9 March 2006

According to the words of my grandfather and grandmother, my uncle and two of my aunties, who all were partisans, that flag was in use during the Second World War, long before it was officialy adopted in 1946. Red has been the Macedonian colour since the antiquity, and the star has always been a symbol used in Macedonia. According that period, the star was five-pointed. Photos from the ASNOM on 2 August 1944 also show the Macedonian flag, flown together with the flags of Yugoslavia, USA, USSR, Great Britain and France.

Valentin Poposki, 7 March 2006

Early variants of the flag

Early variants of the flag - Image by Eugene Ipavec, 4 August 2006

Macedonia used an earlier variant of the flag from 1944 to 1946, seen on old photos from the ASNOM. In the Memorial Room, which is now in Pelince, near Kumanovo, there are five flags from that time: Yugoslavian, Macedonian, Soviet, American (with 48 stars) and British. The Macedonian flag is known in two versions - horizontal and vertical. There was no prescription of the ratio at that time, but all the flags I've seen are long, mostly more than 1:2. The horizontal flag is red with the "fat" star in the middle while the vertical flag is red with the "fat" star in the middle of upper half. A possible date of adoption of these flgas could be 2 August 1944, but there are rumors that they had been in use since 1943.

Valentin Popovski, 3 August 2006

Variant of the flag with a "fat star"

"Fat star" flag - Image by Željko Heimer, 14 July 2006

The flag shown on the postage stamps released in 1980 has a larger star. This 1980 Yugoslav post stamp series shows the flags of all the Republics, in the style of the famous UN flag series. This series shows erroneous images of all the other flags.

Željko Heimer, 14 July 2006

As far as I can remember, the so-called fat star was used mostly in political flags (Communist party, workers' unions, pioneers etc.). The thinner star was used in the 1940s and early 1950s by the flag manufacturers. The "post stamp" star has been popular since 1960s-1980s. It was considered maybe as "modern".

Valentin Poposki, 7 March 2006

Coat of arms of Socialist Macedonia

Coat of arms of Socialist Macedonia - Image by Željko Heimer, 4 October 2004, adapted from the WIPO IPDL database

The coat of arms of Socialist Macedonia is prescribed by Act on the Coat of Arms of the People's Republic of Macedonia, adopted by the People's Assembly of the People's Republic of Macedonia on its second extraordinary session held on July 27, 1946, later on altered by Article 8 of the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, as follows:

The coat of arms is framed by a garland of ears of wheat, tobacco and poppy, tied by a ribbon with the pattern of a traditional costume. In the centre of such a circular space there are mountains, rivers, lakes and the sun; where the ears join there is a red five-pointed star. All this represents "the richness of our country, the struggle and the freedom".

This coat of arms was retained as the coat of arms of the Republic of Macedonia after independence until 2009.

Željko Heimer, 1 January 2010

The coat of arms of the People's Republic of Macedonia, accepted by the Parliament on 27 July 1946, was designed in the same pattern like the other socialistic countries. The design is based on the emblem of the USSR.
Unlike the majority of the socialistic republics that had incorporated their traditional coat of arms in the new emblem, Macedonia has adopted a new landscape design, falling in the same category with People's Republics of Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Slovenia.
This emblem represents the landscape characteristics of Macedonia: the mountains, the rivers, fields and the sun. The wreath represents the crops and is made of wheat, tobacco, cotton and poppies. On the bottom there is a ribbon with characteristic embroidery, and on top there is the five point red star, the symbol of the ruling ideology.

Jovan Jonovski, 4 October 2006