I was wondering if I'd ever get the chance to find an occasion to share these stamps with you and then dear host of Viridian's blog jumps in choosing that perfect topic!
So here we are, with the flags of my dear former Yugoslavia...the amazing country that had to crumble to pieces..and the country that many people feel nostalgic for, including me.
I won't deal with politics here, even though that's the main reason why everything went to hell...I just want to share with you these stamps and a small piece of where i used to live for the first 10/11 years of my life...yeah, im old actually :P
I have these awesome stamps thanks to Goran, who was so kind to send them to me....I absolutely love love love them! I know that there is nothing particular about their design maybe since they just portray flags, but to me they are special coz of the emotional bond we have.
the stamps depict the flags of all the 6 former Yugoslav republics, as well as the stamp of SFRJ (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), the country which existed from the end of WW2 until the beginning of the 1990's, when there was an outbreak of civil wars.
As you can notice, most of the flags are based on the three stripes principle, except for the Macedonian one, but they certainly include the five-pointed star fringed with a golden line, which represents the symbol of the state-economic system of the Federation - the socialism as well as the aspiration to achieve its highest level, the communism.
You can see the Yugoslav flag at the bottom line, shown on both the left and the middle stamp, where on the first one the name of the country is depicted in Latin while on the middle one, in Cyrillic letters, since both of the alphabets were used in the country. The flag of Yugoslavia was adopted on 31 January 1946, and it consists of three parallel lines, where the order is blue, white, red. It is based on the previous Pan-Slavic one, whose basis is identical. The three lines represent the nature of Yugoslavia as a Community or according to the version i like more, the blue colour represents the Adriatic sea, the white one - the freedom and the sky and the red one represents the blood shed during the wars.
Then, starting from the top, first you have the flag of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, while next to it is the one of Socialist Republic of Macedonia, the only one not following the 3 stripes principle. Macedonia got its independence on September 8 1991
In the middle you have the flags of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Slovenia, while at the bottom, apart from the SFRJ flags I had already mentioned, you also have the flag of SR Croatia.
All stamps have face value of 2,50 dinars (the currency of SFRJ), and were issued in 1980. The year when Josip Broz Tito died and which was the starting point for the breaking up of the country.
For more flags and patriotic stamps from around the world, click on the image below...and have a great Sunday :)
