Pan-Slavic colors

The pan-Slavic colors—blue, white and red—were defined by the Prague Slavic Congress, 1848, based on the symbolism of the colors of the flag of Russia, which was introduced in the late 17th century.

Slavic countries that use or have used the colors include Russia, Yugoslavia,[1] Czechoslovakia,[2] Czech Republic,[2] Slovakia,[3] Croatia,[3] Serbia[3] and Slovenia,[3] whereas Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland[a] and Ukraine use different color schemes.

After the initial breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the two remaining Yugoslav republics—Montenegro and Serbia—reconstituted as Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992 and as State Union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, and continued to use the pan-Slavic flag until its own dissolution when Montenegro proclaimed independence in 2006.

Serbia continues to use a flag with all three Pan-Slavic colors, along with fellow republics Croatia and Slovenia.

In 1848, Croatian viceroy Josip Jelačić first designed the flag of Croatia with its modern tricolor (red-white-blue) for the then-concepted Triune Kingdom (and officially adopted by the Kingdom of Croatia), a group of Slovenian intellectuals in Vienna, Austria created the flag of Slovenia (white-blue-red), and the first Slovak flag (in reverse layout – red-blue-white) was introduced and flown by Slovak revolutionaries.