THE FIRST POST- REVOLUTIONARY RENDITION OF

THE GREATER COAT OF ARMS OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE

by Commander Valery Yegorov, a Founding Father and
Saint Andrew Principal Herald Master of the Russian College of Heraldry,
Vice President of the Russian Heraldry Society

     This story began quite a lot of years ago, in August 1983, when I completed a full colour painting of the Greater Coat of Arms of the Russian Empire, a job done for the first time since 1917 in the post-revolutionary history of Russia (or rather the U.S.S.R. at that time). The whole undertaking, however, proved to be rather difficult to perform for a number of reasons.
     Firstly, I had obtained, by a lucky chance, a small black-and-white line drawing of the Greater Coat of Arms of the Russian Empire. I found it quite accidentally in a very old book, the Brockhaus & Ephron Encyclopaedic Dictionary, Volume 17, 1893 (sic!). I had to research and thoroughly check it, and then paint all the figures and tictures of each component exactly, to depict the grandiose Coat of Arms correctly. The whole achievement encompassed 64 separate heraldic fields.

     Secondly, there were no available copying facilities in the Soviet Union at that time. So, to convert a small monochrome line drawing into a large full colour picture might seem a daunting task, if not impossible. Happily enough, my motto at that time was: "The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer".

     Finally, we must remember all that occurred in 1983, for during the Communist regime of the time any serious research into Russia`s pre-revolutionary past – as well as any special interest in the monarchist symbols on the part of a common individual – could be dangerous to some extent.
     It was not, of course, as if I might be caught by gloomy KGB agents in the night, put in prison and tortured in their dark and damp basement cells, in the way those cinematographic fables used to frighten the western people during the cold war. Certainly not!

     Every country in the world, even those considered to be more free and democratic than some others, have their own social taboos, the violation of which would inevitably inflict punishment within their society, and perhaps from their government. Naturally enough, the Soviet Union of 1983 vintage had various specific taboos of its own; should I have revealed my sincere love of, and profound reverence to the Tsarist Russia, I might easily have to face the fire of slashing criticism and probably be treated as a reckless person. For these reasons, my work on the Greater Arms of the Russian Empire was performed in secret.

     It took me several months to complete the work and fully achieve the goal of reviving the magnificent Greater Arms of the Russian Empire to their former glory and splendour, the artwork being executed with gouache on a large sheet of plywood. Although there were only a few friends to whom I could show the unusual rendition, I was nevertheless happy and proud of the fact that I was the first person to have done it in Russia in 66 years.

     Seven years later on, in 1990, it was I who first dared to launch a vigorous campaign in the press for the Double-headed Eagle to be returned as the State Emblem of Russia. Soon afterwards, in 1991, I made the first historical translation of the full blazon of the Greater Arms of the Russian Empire into English, which was published in the Russian heraldic magazine Gerboved, Number One, 1992.

Commander Valery Yegorov

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Photo above right:
     The proud author, Commander Valery Yegorov, at his famous piece of heraldic artwork – 20 years later, in August 2003, Russia.

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