When Byelorussia and Ukraine were the founding members of the United Nations in 1945, all of their flags were red with only small markings in upper left corners and needed distinct flags for each other. In February 1947, with UN pressure, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union adopted a resolution, which each of its republics were recommended to develop and adopt new national flags. So they expressed the idea of a union state, asked to use the symbols of the State flag of the Soviet Union, such as the gold hammer and sickle and the red star, as well as maintain the predominance of red color on the flag of the Union republics. National, historical and cultural features of each republic was instructed to express the other colors and the order of their location, as well as the location based on the national ornament. After the competitions for the best projects in the 1949–1954 years of the new flags of the 16 republics were developed and adopted. The authorities in Ukraine and Byelorussia were the first to adopt the flags on July 5, 1950, and December 25, 1951, respectively. All others followed suit between 1952 and 1953 with the last republic, the Russian SFSR, adopted the flag on January 9, 1954. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, only Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine retained their Soviet republic flags as independent states until the new official flags were adopted in 1992. Their final versions prior to re-adoption of the non-Soviet national flags were as follows:
Flags of other republics
Other Union Republics and autonomous republics existed within the Soviet Union, mostly using flags on a similar pattern, or the flag of their "parent" Union Republic, further defaced. Today, the only former Soviet Union territories that use modified versions of their original Soviet flag are the republic of Transnistria and Belarus. The official flags of the ASSRs were seldom used, and were generally the flag of the republic to which the ASSR belonged, defaced with the ASSR name in its own language and the official language of the SSR; flags matching this pattern are not displayed in the gallery below:
