The Czar’s Bird Returns

Have you ever noticed how clothing fashions quickly come and go out of style and then eventually return a few decades later? Edwardian suites. Lapels that get narrow after being wide only to eventually widen again, same with men’s ties. Now some thing similar has happened in Russia. The Imperial Russian Eagle was a spectacular heraldic two headed eagle with three crowns until the 1917 revolutions. Then a few years ago a collector friend in St. Petersburg, Russia sent me the current Russian military hat badge illustrated below. Guess what? The old Imperial Eagle is back! Look at all the crowns; can a real Romanov be far behind?