What would be the flag of the Soviet Union if the Sovereign States treaty was signed?

How radically would the flag change?


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As the title implies.

The Sovereign States treaty was an attempt at reforming the Soviet Union into a western-style democratic confederation that was initially worked upon by Gorbachev.

Unfortunately for him and many others, the August Coup squandered all hopes for reform within the Union. The attempted Coup destabilized the Union too much to see the USS treaty put into place.

But if it didn't happen and the Union of Sovereign States treaty was signed and the USSR was reorganized into the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics (Gorbachev's personal favorite name), what would the flag look like?

I personally don't think it would stay the same, but it wouldn't change too much. Maybe a removal of the Star or the Hammer and Sickle, but it wouldn't change radically in my opinion.
 
It would stay the same. Why change something that still embodies one of the main reasons for the Soviet Union's formation? The USS would still carry on the Soviet legacy and a treaty would not change that.
 
What were the specific terms of the Sovereign States Treaty?

Here's some stuff from Wikipedia:

"A less centralized federal system was proposed by President Gorbachev during the Communist Party Congress of July 1990. A draft of the New Union Treaty was submitted to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union on November 23, 1990. A drafting committee started work on the text on January 1, 1991."

"An agreement between the Soviet central government and the nine republics, the so-called "9+1" agreement, was finally signed in Novo-Ogaryovo on April 23. The New Union Treaty would have converted the Soviet Union into a federation of independent republics with a common president, foreign policy, and military."

It basically would reform the USSR into something akin to the CIS but as a single and a bit more centralized country.

Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkistan all signed the treaty, so it's fair to assume they would be the countries left in the Union seeing as the rest would most likely be given independence.
 
They might drop the hammer and sickle. Don't know if there's some symbol that could be used and is commonly accepted by all states.
 
Perhaps something like the old flag of the RSFSR, with the hammer and sickle replaced with the letters ССГ in a canton with a gold border? Historical continuity and something new?

That being said, I'm not sure if a substantial group wanted it to change and I highly doubt anyone considered it a high priority.
 
I would think the flag would be retained unchanged or with only minor changes due to historical significance, as well as the potential retention of the "Soviet" moniker should they opt for "Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics" over "Union of Sovereign States". Eventually should more ethnic nationalist or right-wing factions might demand it's replacement with something more "inclusive" or "less communist"
 
"On the first draft of the treaty released in July 1991, the proclaimed name for the new nation was the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics; Russian: Союз Советских Cуверенных Республик, translit. Soyuz Sovetskikh Suverennykh Respublik.[1] This name was proposed in order to conserve the Russian "СССР" acronym, as well as the "USSR" and "Soviet Union" in English." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Sovereign_States

So just keep a red flag and have the letters SSSR (in Cyrillic CCCP) on it! Communists can read the second S as standing for Socialist, non-Communists as standing for Sovereign. The hammer and sickle aren't necessary; they weren't on the original 1918 RSFSR flag.

(By the time the word "soviet" was dropped after the failed coup, the union was dead anyway.)
 
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