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Hammer and sickle

Symbol of communism

Hammer and sickle

Symbol of communism

The hammer and sickle symbol

The hammer and sickle (Unicode: ) is a socialist and communist symbol representing proletarian solidarity between industrial and agricultural workers. It was first adopted during the Russian Revolution at the end of World War I, the hammer representing workers and the sickle representing the peasants.

After World War I (from which Russia withdrew in 1917) and the Russian Civil War, the hammer and sickle became more widely used as a symbol for labor within the Soviet Union (USSR) and for international proletarian unity. It was taken up by many communist movements around the world, some with local variations. The hammer and sickle remains commonplace in Communist states, such as China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam, but also some former Soviet republics following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, such as Belarus and Russia. Some countries have imposed bans on communist symbols, where the display of the hammer and sickle is prohibited.

History

Worker symbolism

One example of use prior to its political instrumentalization by the Soviet Union is found in Chilean currency circulating since 1894.

Inception

In 1918, Yevgeny Ivanovich Kamzolkin proposed a 'hammer and sickle' symbol as a decoration for the May Day celebrations in the Zamoskvorechye District of Moscow. It originally featured a sword, but Lenin strongly objected, disliking the militaristic connotations. On 6 July 1923, the 2nd session of the Central Executive Committee (CIK) adopted the emblem.

In 1919, the new Republic of Austria introduced a sickle and a hammer to its coat of arms, one in each talon of its supporting eagle, to represent the farming and industrial classes. They were removed in 1934 with the establishment of the Fascist Federal State of Austria and returned in 1945 after the defeat of Nazi Germany (which had absorbed Austria in 1938) in the Second World War.

In his work, Daily Life in a Crumbling Empire: The Absorption of Russia into the World Economy, sociologist David Lempert hypothesizes that the hammer and sickle was a secular replacement for the patriarchal cross.

Use in Soviet Union

  • The State Emblem of the Soviet Union and the Coats of Arms of the Soviet Republics showed the hammer and sickle, which also appeared on the red star badge on the uniform cap of the Red Army uniform and in many other places.
  • Serp i Molot (transliteration of , "sickle and hammer") is the name of the Moscow Metallurgical Plant.
  • Serp i Molot is also the name of a stop on the electric railway line from Kurski railway station in Moscow to Gorky, featured in Venedikt Yerofeyev's novel, Moscow-Petushki.

Meaning

At the time of creation, the hammer and sickle stood for worker-peasant alliance, with the hammer a traditional symbol of the industrial proletariat (who dominated the proletariat of Russia) and the sickle a traditional symbol for the peasantry, but the meaning has since broadened to a globally recognizable symbol for Marxism, communist parties, or socialist states.

Current usage

Post-Soviet states

Two federal subjects of the post-Soviet Russian Federation use the hammer and sickle in their symbols: the Vladimir Oblast has them on its flag and the Bryansk Oblast has them on its flag and coat of arms, which is also the central element of its flag. In addition, the Russian city of Oryol also uses the hammer and sickle on its flag.

The former Soviet (now Russian) national airline, Aeroflot, continues to use the hammer and sickle in its symbol.

[[Flag of Transnistria

The de facto government of Transnistria uses (with minor modifications) the flag and the emblem of the former Moldavian SSR, which includes the hammer and sickle. The flag can also appear without the hammer and sickle in some circumstances, for example on Transnistrian-issued license plates, military uniforms, and money.

Communist parties

Three out of the five currently ruling Communist parties use a hammer and sickle as the party symbol: the Chinese Communist Party, the Communist Party of Vietnam and the Lao People's Revolutionary Party. In Laos and Vietnam, the hammer and sickle party flags can often be seen flying side by side with their respective national flags.

Many communist parties around the world also use it, including the Communist Party of Greece, the Communist Party of Argentina, the Communist Party of Chile, both the Communist Party of Brazil and the Brazilian Communist Party, the Purba Banglar Sarbahara Party from Bangladesh, the Communist Party of Sri Lanka, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the Indian Communist Marxist Party, the Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist), the Egyptian Communist Party, the Communist Party of Pakistan, the Communist Refoundation Party in Italy, the Communist Party of Spain, the Communist Party of Denmark, the Communist Party of Norway, the Romanian Communist Party, the Lebanese Communist Party, the Communist Party of the Philippines and the Shining Path. The Communist Party of Sweden, the Portuguese Communist Party and the Mexican Communist Party use the hammer and sickle imposed on the red star.

Variations

[[Flag of Angola
[[Flag of Mozambique

Many symbols having similar structures and messages to the original have been designed. For example, the Angolan flag shows a segment of a cog, crossed by a machete and crowned with a socialist star, while the flag of Mozambique features an AKM crossed by a hoe. In the logo of the Communist Party USA, a circle is formed by a half cog and a semicircular sickle-blade. A hammer is laid directly over the sickle's handle, with the hammer's head at the logo's center. The logo of the Communist Party of Turkey consists of half a cog wheel crossed by a hammer, with a star on the top.

Tools represented in other designs include: the brush, sickle and hammer of the Workers' Party of Korea; the spade, flaming torch and quill used prior to 1984 by the British Labour Party; the pickaxe and rifle used in communist Albania; and the hammer and compasses of the East German emblem and flag. The Far Eastern Republic of Russia used an anchor crossed over a spade or pickaxe, symbolising the union of the fishermen and miners. The Fourth International, founded by Leon Trotsky, uses a hammer and sickle symbol on which the number 4 is superimposed. The hammer and sickle in the Fourth International symbol are the opposite of other hammer and sickle symbols in that the head of the hammer is on the right side and the sickle end tip on the left. The Trotskyist League for the Fifth International merges a hammer with the number 5, using the number's lower arch to form the sickle. A sickle with a rifle is also used by the People's Mojahedin of Iran.

The Communist Party of Britain uses the hammer and dove symbol. Designed in 1988 by Michal Boncza, it is intended to highlight the party's connection to the peace movement. It is usually used in conjunction with the hammer and sickle, and it appears on all of the CPB's publications. Some members of the CPB prefer one symbol over the other, although the party's 1994 congress reaffirmed the hammer and dove's position as the official emblem of the party. Similarly, the Communist Party of Israel uses a dove over the hammer and sickle as its symbol. The flag of the Guadeloupe Communist Party uses a sickle, turned to look like a majuscule G, to represent Guadeloupe.

In 1938, the Dobama Asiayone, an anti-British nationalist group in the then British Burma, adopted a tricolour flag charged with a red sickle and hammer. From 1974–2010, the flag of Burma (Myanmar) featured a bushel of rice superimposed on a cogwheel surrounded by fourteen white stars; the rice representing the peasants and the cogwheel representing the workers, the combination symbolizing that the peasants and workers be the two basic social classes for State building, while the fourteen equal-sized white stars indicate the unity and equality of fourteen member states of the Union.

The flag of Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, Party of the Revolution in Swahili), currently the ruling political party of Tanzania, has a slightly different symbol with a hammer and a hoe (jembe) instead of a sickle to represent the most common farm tool in Africa.

The symbols of the liberal socialist parties of Radical Civic Union in Argentina and the Czech National Social Party in the Czech Republic feature a hammer and a quill, with the former representing workers and the latter representing clerks.

The election symbol of the Communist Party of India consists of a horizontal sickle, vertically crossed by Ears of Corn in the center.

Art

The hammer and sickle has long been a common theme in socialist realism, but it has also seen some depiction in non-Marxist popular culture. Andy Warhol who created many drawings and photographs of the hammer and sickle is the most famous example of this. File:Lenpl_06.jpg|The metro station, Plošča Lienina, Minsk File:BWHammerSickle.jpg|Sándor Pinczehelyi, Hammer and Sickle File:Hammer and Sickle - Kerala.jpg|A tableau in a communist rally in Kerala, India File:Juche-Tower-2014.jpg | "Worker, peasant and the intellectual" in front of the Juche Tower, Pyongyang File:Animalism flag.svg|The Hoof and Horn flag described in the book Animal Farm is a parody of the hammer and sickle.

Unicode

In Unicode, the "hammer and sickle" symbol is U+262D (☭). It is part of the Miscellaneous Symbols (2600–26FF) code block. It was added to Unicode 1.1 in 1993.

References

References

  1. "Flag of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics".
  2. "20 Centavos 1895".
  3. "Chilean peso example, 1927".
  4. (1957-03-18). "АртРу.инфо - Художники - Камзолкин Евгений Иванович".
  5. "International Gallery of Contemporary Artists".
  6. "The Hammer and Sickle: The Role of Symbolism and Rituals in the Russian Revolution".
  7. (1997). "Critical companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914-1921". Indiana University Press.
  8. Lempert, David. (1996). "Daily Life in a Crumbling Empire: The Absorption of Russia into the World Economy". Columbia University Press/ Eastern European Monographs.
  9. (2018-09-01). "De unde vine simbolul "secera şi ciocanul". Ce ţară l-a folosit prima şi în ce state este interzis". Adevarul Holding.
  10. (May 13, 2020). "Hammer and Sickle on Flags and State Emblems".
  11. (April 18, 2003). "Aeroflot Logo To Keep Hammer And Sickle".
  12. Potter, Benjamin. (2022). "Unrecognized Republic, Recognizable Consequences". [[Marine Corps University Press]].
  13. "KKE - Αρχική". kke.gr.
  14. (17 March 2010). "Estatutos do PCP, art. 72". pcp.pt/estatutos-do-pcp.
  15. TM. (2019-06-17). "Turkey's communist party to boycott İstanbul election".
  16. "Parti Communiste Guadeloupéen". flagspot.net.
  17. Khin Yi. (1988). "The Dobama Movement in Burma (1930-1938)". Cornell University Press.
  18. . (2006). ["မြန်မာဖတ်စာ ဒုတိယတန်း (Grade-3)"](http://www.myanmarbookshop.com/MyanmarBooks/BookDetails/7116). *Ministry of Education, Government of the Union of Myanmar*.
  19. (4 May 2014). "Communist symbols to be banned in Georgia". [[BBC News]].
  20. "Act C of 2012 on the Criminal Code, Section 335: Use of Symbols of Totalitarianism".
  21. (21 June 2013). "Latvia Bans Soviet, Nazi Symbols". RIA Novosti.
  22. (17 June 2008). "Lithuanian ban on Soviet symbols". [[BBC News]].
  23. (12 July 2012). "Moldovan Parliament Bans Communist Symbols". [[Radio Free Europe]].
  24. "Ukraine Bans Soviet-Era Symbols". [[The Wall Street Journal]].
  25. "LAW OF UKRAINE. On the condemnation of the communist and national socialist (Nazi) regimes, and prohibition of propaganda of their symbols".
  26. "Про засудження комуністичного та націонал-соціалістичного ... - від 09.04.2015 № 317-VIII". rada.gov.ua.
  27. "Free speech questioned as Estonia prepares to ban Soviet, Nazi symbols".
  28. "Ants Erm: Erinevalt venelaste ajaloost on Venemaa ajalugu Eestis vaid vägivald, küüditamine ja kommunistlik diktatuur".
  29. "У поліції нагадали, що за серп і молот можна сісти на 5 років".
  30. Bobkov, Denys. (7 May 2021). "Заборона символіки тоталітарних режимів: що мають знати миколаївці".
  31. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-12059475 EU won't legislate on communist crimes], BBC News (22 December 2010).
  32. (27 February 2013). "Hungary, hammer and sickle ban declared illegal". [[Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata.
  33. (5 June 2013). "Constitutional Court rules that 'hammer and sickle' can be used". allmoldova.com.
  34. (2017-10-29). "Declassified files outline US support for 1965 Indonesia massacre".
  35. Dickie Christanto. (20 October 2008). "Artists summoned over communist symbol exhibition". [[The Jakarta Post]].
  36. "Indonesian activist jailed for advocating communism".
  37. (2018-01-12). "Indonesia's 'Anti-Communism' Law Used Against Environmental Activist".
  38. (19 July 2011). "Nowelizacja kodeksu karnego.".
  39. "☭ Hammer and Sickle Emoji".
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