Use | Regional |
---|---|
Proportion | 1:2 |
Design | Three equal horizontal bands of red, blue and white. |
The flag of Vojvodina is based on the Flag of Serbia of which Vojvodina is a northern province. The flag consists of three horizontal strands of red, blue and white with the blue portion being significantly wider.
The blue portion contains three yellow stars representing the three geographic regions of Vojvodina: Bačka, Banat and Srem.
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The historical flag of the Serbian Vojvodina was introduced in 1848. Originally, it was a flag of Sombor volunteers' regiment from 1848 and 1849, but it was also used as an unofficial flag of Serbian Vojvodina.
The coat-of-arms used on this flag was essentially the Austrian Habsburg imperial arms, with the coat-of-arms of the Serbs (Serbian cross, with four ocila (firesteels)) on the chests of the black eagle. The bearer of the Serbian arms was the Austrian black eagle, instead of the Serbian white one, in order to show the fidelity of the newly established Voivodship to the Imperial Court in Vienna.
The coat-of-arms was added to the Serbian national tricolour. Thus the flag differed from the flag of the Principality of Serbia, which had a different arms in the middle of its state flag.
The blue-yellow-green flag (vertical and horizontal) was used as unofficial flag of Vojvodina by some regionalist political parties such as League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, Vojvodina Coalition, etc. This flag was introduced during the 1990s (at the time when Vojvodina did not had its official flag) with the proposal that it should become the future flag of Vojvodina. Since the adoption of the official Vojvodina flag in 2004, the proposed flag has mostly been abandoned as an unofficial symbol of the province, and is today only sporadically used as the LSV party flag. The proposed 1990s flag is based on the similar flag that dates back to 11 May 1848, when it was adopted as the flag of the Serb revolutionaries from Šajkaška (central part of Vojvodina, east of Novi Sad). More precisely, that flag was used by the Šajkaš Battalion that belonged to the Germanic-Illyric Regiment of the Banatian Military Frontier. However, the original flag had a brownish colour instead of green. There are horizontal variants of the flag as well.
Those who proposed the flag during the 1990s contended that blue, yellow and green colors representing the sky, corn and grazing land (pasture), respectively. Another interpretation is that those colors representing the sky, sun and fertile land of Vojvodina, respectively.
During the 1990s, this flag was one of the symbols of Vojvodinian regionalist movement that was opposing Milošević's regime in Belgrade. Today this flag is used as a party flag of the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, which advocating that Vojvodina should become a constituent republic of the new regionalized and federalized Serbia. However, even this party now using official flag of Vojvodina, as a symbol of the region.