A Quick Note About that Ukranian Separatist Flag
Southron hearts have been all a-flutter in recent days because Russian separatists in the Ukraine have adopted a banner (right) that looks a lot like the Confederate Battle Flag. Like so many other “heritage” arguments, though, this one requires a certain ignorance of actual history and a willingness to believe pretty much anything that sounds good.
There’s a general similarity, certainly. But the design the separatists are using has a much older, and much more relevant, history that most in the West may not be aware of. The diagonal cross, the Cross of St. Andrew, has been used as a symbol of Russia for centuries. (St. Andrew is that country’s patron saint.) It first appeared in proposals for a Russian naval ensign more than 300 years ago, during the reign of Peter the Great, and was formally adopted as early as 1710. On a red background, it was adopted as a jack and as a flag for coastal forts in 1700, remaining in use until the Revolution of 1917. Both the ensign and the jack were brought back in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and remain in use today.
Russian ensign, 1712-1917 and 1992-present (left), and the Russian naval jack, 1700-1917, 1992-present (right).
By adopting the banner that they have, the Новороссия (New Russia) separatists in the Ukraine are making a very public show of their allegiance to Russia — not to some abstract principle of secession, or states’ rights, or anything else. The Hit & Run blog over at the Libertarian magazine Reason cuts through the Confederate nonsense:
I know that a lot of southern nationalists in this country have a chubby for Vladimir Putin, seeing him as an ally in the culture wars. Fine, whatever. But what’s going on in the Ukraine, and the symbols chosen to define it, has nothing to do with the American South or the Confederacy. It’s about ethnic Russians making an appeal to fellow Russians, using a symbol that other Russians know.
That’s all it is. Move along, folks.
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Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog 
Well, it doesn’t help when different media sources covering the issue make the correlation. Then there was the whole hanging of flags in Kiev. Which is an interesting photo-op.
I expect the media to be dumb — as well as to run with any “Confederate” angle they can imagine. I expect the True Defenders of the Southron Cross to have more sense about their own symbols.
Given their perversion of Scottish history to support their moonshine and magnolias view of the South, this doesn’t surprise me.
I should add that I find it particularly annoying because I’m Scots on my mother’s side of the family and I still have family in Scotland, including a second cousin.
I can’t believe it. You have actually written something that I wholeheartedly agree with and yes, many League members are “cheer-leading” for Vlad. It makes no sense and if they believe he is so “in tune” with their ideals I would invite them to move into Russia proper and try and start a secessionist movement (it wouldn’t go far).