Posted on April 24, 2009 - by Venik
Silver Lining
State Duma – the lower house of the Russian Parliament – voted over the objections of the Communist Party to adopt the redesigned red star marking for military aircraft. The new design is similar to the old one, but features a smaller red star surrounded by a thin blue border. Unexpectedly, the new legislature was rejected by the Parliament’s upper house. Fifty nine Federation Council senators, including the senate speaker, voted to keep the old red star design.
The new and the old VVS Red Star
The new design of the red star was proposed by the Ministry of Defense and promoted by Putin’s “United Russia” party, which should be able to come up with the three hundred votes needed to overturn the Federation Council veto. However, this unexpected controversy over one of Russia’s most prominent military symbols just two weeks before Victory Day celebrations attracted a lot of public attention to the pointless and aesthetically challenged redesign. To add to the confusion, a number of aircraft scheduled to take part in the May 9 parade over the Red Square were already repainted with the new markings. If State Duma does not move quickly to pass the new legislation over the veto, Russian Air Force will celebrate Victory Day with illegal markings on its aircraft.
From the practical side, markings for military aircraft usually are designed using simple geometrical shapes and high-contrast color schemes to make them stand out from far away. The Soviet VVS star is one of the most recognized military aircraft markings. The new star adds an extra element that makes the overall design more cumbersome, while reducing the emblem’s contrast and visibility. The shades of red and blue used in the new design are supposed to match Russia’s flag. What looks good for the flag, however, simply doesn’t work for the new Air Force star.
Thew new star up close
Another practical consideration is cost. The old design was simple and used only two colors – red and white. The new design adds another color, increasing complexity and cost of the paint job. According to the Russian media, some three million rubles were spent on repainting the stars on the aircraft that will take part in the May 9 parade – four Su-24M, two MiG-31BS, and five MiG-29s. Even more money will be spent on repainting several helicopters and transport aircraft that will also take part in the parade. An additional consideration is the low-visibility, grayscale version of the insignia. In the case with the redesigned emblem, the blue and red colors effectively blend together even at a close viewing distance.
Proponents of the redesign argue that it is time to pull away from the symbolism of a state that hasn’t existed for over eighteen years. The Chief of Staff of the Russian Air Force Lt. Gen. Vadim Volkovitsky even argued before the parliamentary committee that the new design will help troops on the ground to tell apart Russian aircraft from the enemy. It is likely Volkovitsky was referring to the friendly fire incident in which a Russian Su-25 was shot down in August of 2008 by South Ossetian air defenses that mistook it for a Georgian Su-25. Georgian aircraft are marked with a seven pointed red star in a thin blue circle, which from a distance may look like the Russian star (or like the rising sun emblem of the Japanese Air Self-Defence force, for that matter).
And this is how the new star looks from a distance
If you ask me, before money is spent on abandoning Soviet symbols in the Russian Air Force, perhaps it would be a good idea to spend some money on abandoning the Soviet-made aircraft and replacing them with something new. It doesn’t take a genius to design a new emblem for the air force. But what’s the point if you put that emblem on the same old Su-25? General Volkovitsky used to be a pilot a very long time ago. Unfortunately, his eyesight these days is not what it used to be. From about twenty meters away the new star looks exactly like the old star. So, once again, what is the point?
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April 25, 2009
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You are right: the new star sucks. Still, I wish they finally got rid of the damn star along with all the rest of the Soviet symbols (starting with the Mausoleum). The Bolshevik ideology has costs Russia something in the range of 80’000’000 people, it has crushed and almost destroyed entire classes of Russian society and it has submitted the country to the bloody and barbaric rule of a mix of terrorists and petty criminals. I am rather baffled that it would take so long for Russia to stop humiliating and ridiculing itself by sticking to these symbols. Can you imagine the Israelis proudly wearing Swastikas or Armenians displaying moon crescents?!
Lastly, there is nothing *Russian* in these intentionally internationalist symblos. The Russian Navy lead the way by putting the Cross of Saint Andrew on its flags and I wish the rest of the military (and civil society) did likewise.
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Venik Reply:
April 25th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
This is where we disagree. I believe Bolshevik ideology is what pulled Russia out of mental and systemic stagnation that would have inevitably led to its demise as a nation. Revolutions don’t happen without a reason. They certainly don’t succeed unless there is overwhelming public support for the cause.
Russia’s last czar dragged the country into two devastating major wars that could have been avoided but ended up costing Russia millions of lives. By the end of the First World War more Russian soldiers surrendered to the enemy than did British, German, and French soldiers combined. This should give you an idea of the mental state of the Russian military and the Russian public in general at that time. There is no doubt in my mind that, had the czarist regime lasted another three decades, Russia’s national symbol would have been the swastika.
Aside from a few islands of art and science, the vast majority of Russians on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution were illiterate. What art, science or technology can we possibly be talking about? And without science, technology and industry the Russian army would have galloped into the Second World War on horseback armed with some second-rate imported boomsticks. In just forty years what you call Bolshevik ideology propelled Russia from illiteracy to space exploration. As to 80 million dead you mentioned, I hope you haven’t been reading too much Solzhenitsyn. The man was writing novels, you know.
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vineyardsaker Reply:
April 25th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Hmm, looks like I will disagree with almost every single word you wrote here. Except one thing: you are right, I did read a lot of Solzhenitsyn. All in all I must have read every single thing he ever wrote, at least twice
Judging by your views of pre-1917 Russia as a backward hellhole I won’t bother with trying to despute your statements one by one. If Solzhenitsyn did not convince you (you have read him, right?) nothing I say will make any difference.
Besides, the real Russia is dead by now – the internationalist thugs who took power in 1917 succeeded in that main goal of theirs – and nothing we say about it will make one bit of a difference to this fact.
You and I can now both stand looking at the grave in which Russia is buried and choose for ourselves whether we want to weep over it, or spit on it.
Kind regards,
The Saker
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Venik Reply:
April 26th, 2009 at 4:02 am
I apologize for finding it difficult to drop this subject. I did not read everything Solzhenitsyn ever wrote, but I did read most of it. Like Asimov with his endless stories about robots, Solzhenitsyn’s gets a bit tedious and repetitive after a while. Perhaps its not his writing style that I find difficult to digest, but the fact that he attempts to pass a work of fiction for historical research. You are either a novelist or a historian. I don’t know a single author who could combine these two skills successfully. It’s always either a good read but detached from reality, or statistically accurate and very dry.
But here are some basic facts to support what I said earlier. According to the official census from the late 1880s (I think it was 1887, but I may be wrong), over 70% Russian males and 90% females were illiterate. This is not how you want your country to enter the age of the industrial revolution.
During the First World War there were over 3.5 million Russian POWs, which was more than British, German and French numbers put together. The Austrian-Hungarian POW numbers came close at 2.2 million but still far below the Russian numbers. Not exactly an indication of flourishing patriotism. One should also remember that the Bolshevik revolution succeeded primarily due to overwhelming support from the military.
As to second-rate boomsticks, the 1877 Russian-Turkish war is a good example. Russian troops were armed with cheap bolt-action “Baranovki” and “Berdanki”, while the Turkish army had the far more effective 11- or 15-shot Winchester carbines responsible for the vast majority of Russian losses. Another example would be the 1904 war with Japan, when the Russian Navy found itself badly outgunned by the supposedly backward Japanese and left most of its fleet at the bottom of the Tsushima Strait. Luckily, cruiser Aurora managed to escape the slaughter
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July 31, 2011
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Don’t care to argue your main point, but I do think it should be added that the Soviet Union did enter WWII rather woefully and unnecessarily unprepared, the latter being in large measure thanks to the “Tsar” in charge at the time. Weapons quality adequate, even excellent in some cases, but qualified leaders dead or imprisoned, defenses too close to border and reaction time too slow. It is true that USSR contribution to downfall of Hitler was indispensable, but only at the cost of enormous casualties, etc. But I’m sure none of this is news to anyone.
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