Hammer and sickle

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, Marxist parties, or socialist states.[3]

In the Soviet Union, the hammer and sickle came to take on a gendered meaning, with the sickle coming to be associated with women and the hammer men.[3]

Contrary to the popular belief, the symbol is also widely used as a World War II resistance symbol against Nazism in which the Soviet soldiers and citizens died during the war.

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 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 (which is a socialist and not a communist 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 Marxist and Islamist group People's Mojahedin of Iran.

The Communist Party of Britain (CGB) 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.[8]

The flag of the Black Front, a Strasserist group founded by early Nazi Party members and expelled around the time of the Night of the Long Knives purge, along with his supporters and the Sturmabteilung and originator of the ideology and the Black Front himself Otto Strasser, featured a crossed hammer and sword, symbolizing the unity of the workers and military.

The flag of Burma (from 1974–2010) featured a bushel of rice superimposed on a cogwheel.

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 National Bolshevik Party used the hammer and sickle in their flag, but colored black instead of gold and in a design similar to the Nazi flag, a brighter red flag than the USSR, with a black hammer and sickle on a white disk in the center.

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.

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  The metro station, Ploshchad Lenina, Minsk
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  Sándor Pinczehelyi, Hammer and Sickle
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  A tableau in a communist rally in Kerala, India
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  Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, Moscow

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,[9] Hungary,[10] Latvia,[11] Lithuania,[12] Moldova (1 October 2012 – 4 June 2013)[13] and Ukraine[14][15][16] have banned communist symbols including this one. A similar law was considered in Estonia, but it eventually failed in a parliamentary committee.

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 was not met, leaving individual member states to determine the extent to wished they wished to handle past totalitarian crimes.[17]

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.[18] 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.[19]

In Indonesia, the display of communist symbols and the country's Communist party was banned by decree of United States–supported[20] dictator Suharto, following the 1965–1966 killings of communists in which over 500,000 people were killed,[20] with the United States providing financial support and targets for assassination to the Suharto dictatorship.[21] In January 2018, an activist protesting against Bumi Resources displayed the hammer and sickle, was accused of spreading communism, and later jailed.[22]

In Poland, dissemination of items which are "mediums of fascist, communist or other totalitarian symbolism" was criminalized in 1997. However, the Constitutional Tribunal found this sanction to be unconstitutional in 2011.[23]

In Unicode, the "hammer and sickle" symbol is U+262D (☭). It is part of the Miscellaneous Symbols (2600–26FF) code block. On systems where Compose key is available, it could be written as [Compose]+CCCP. It was added to Unicode 1.1 in 1993.[24]

• Arm and hammer
• Communist symbolism
• Hammer and pick (⚒)
• National Emblem of East Germany ("hammer and compass")
• Red flag (⚑)
• Red star (★)
• Transport and Map Symbols Unicode block (contains 🛠 "hammer and wrench" as U+1F6E0)

• Media related to Hammer and sickle at Wikimedia Commons
• Media related to Hammer and sickle in heraldry at Wikimedia Commons