Hammer and sickle
Symbol of communism
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Through Unicode, Russian Revolution and World War I
History
Worker symbolism
One example of hammer-and-sickle symbolism prior to its political instrumentalization by the Soviet Union is found in Chilean currency circulating since 1894.
Inception
In 1918, Yevgeny Ivanovich Kamzolkin designed 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 symbol served as 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 Russian: cерп и молот, "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.
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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.
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 Communist Party of 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
Many symbols having structures and messages similar 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 AK-47 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.
Legal status
In several countries in the former Eastern Bloc, there are laws that define the hammer and sickle as the symbol of a "totalitarian and criminal ideology" and the public display of the hammer and sickle and other Communist symbols such as the red star is considered a criminal offence. Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova (1 October 2012 – 4 June 2013) and Ukraine have banned communist symbols including this one. A similar law was considered in Estonia, but it eventually failed in a parliamentary committee. In Ukraine, the legislature equates communist symbols including hammer with sickle to Nazi swastika symbols.
In 2010, the Lithuanian, Latvian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Czech governments called for the European Union to criminalize "the approval, denial or belittling of communist crimes" similar to how a number of EU member states have banned Holocaust denial. The European Commission turned down this request, finding after a study that the criteria for EU-wide criminal legislation were not met, leaving individual member states to determine the extent to which they wished to handle past totalitarian crimes.
In February 2013, the Constitutional Court of Hungary annulled the ban on the use of symbols of fascist and communist dictatorships, including the hammer and sickle, the red star and the swastika, saying the ban was too broad and imprecise. The court also pointed to a judgement of the European Court of Human Rights in which Hungary was found guilty of violation of article 10, the right to freedom of expression. In June 2013, the Constitutional Court of Moldova ruled that the Moldovan Communist Party's symbols—the hammer and sickle—are legal and can be used.
In Indonesia, the display of communist symbols is banned and the country's Communist party was also banned by decree of president Suharto, following the 1965–1966 killings of communists in which over 500,000 people were killed. In January 2018, an activist protesting against Bumi Resources displayed the hammer and sickle, was accused of spreading communism, and later jailed.
In Poland, dissemination of items which are "media of fascist, communist or other totalitarian symbolism" was criminalized in 1997. However, the Constitutional Tribunal found this sanction to be unconstitutional in 2011.
Usage gallery
Flags
Europe and Russia/Soviet Union
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Former
Asia and Oceania except Russia/Soviet Union
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Africa
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Americas
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State emblems
Soviet Union (in the constitutional order)
Other
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Logos
Europe
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Asia
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Africa
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Americas
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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.