In 1919, the newRepublic of Austria introduced a sickle and a hammer toits 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 FascistFederal State of Austria and returned in 1945 after the defeat ofNazi Germany (which hadabsorbed 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 thepatriarchal cross.[8][9]
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 forMarxism,communist parties, orsocialist states.[6]
Two federal subjects of the post-Soviet Russian Federation use the hammer and sickle in their symbols: theVladimir Oblast has them on its flag and theBryansk Oblast has them on its flag and coat of arms, which is also the central element of its flag. In addition, the Russian city ofOryol also uses the hammer and sickle on its flag.[citation needed]
The former Soviet (now Russian) national airline,Aeroflot, continues to use the hammer and sickle in its symbol.[10]
Thede facto government ofTransnistria uses (with minor modifications) the flag and the emblem of the formerMoldavian SSR, which includes the hammer and sickle. The flag can also appear without the hammer and sickle in some circumstances, for example on Transnistrian-issuedlicense plates.[citation needed]
Many symbols having similar structures and messages to the original have been designed. For example, theAngolan flag shows a segment of acog, crossed by amachete and crowned with asocialist star, while theflag of Mozambique features anAKM crossed by ahoe. In the logo of theCommunist Party USA, a circle is formed by a half cog and asemicircular sickle-blade. A hammer is laid directly over the sickle's handle, with the hammer'shead at the logo's center. The logo of theCommunist Party of Turkey consists of half a cog wheel crossed by a hammer, with a star on the top.[13]
TheCommunist Party of Britain uses the hammer anddove 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, theCommunist Party of Israel uses a dove over the hammer and sickle as its symbol. The flag of theGuadeloupe Communist Party uses a sickle, turned to look like amajuscule G, to representGuadeloupe.[14]
In 1938, theDobama Asiayone, an anti-British nationalist group in the thenBritish Burma, adopted a tricolour flag charged with a red sickle and hammer.[15] From 1974–2010, theflag of Burma (Myanmar) featured a bushel ofrice superimposed on acogwheel 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 fourteenmember states of the Union.[16]
The flag ofChama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, Party of the Revolution inSwahili), currently the ruling political party ofTanzania, has a slightly different symbol with a hammer and ahoe (jembe) instead of a sickle to represent the most common farm tool in Africa.[citation needed]
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.
In several countries in the formerEastern 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,[17]Hungary,[18]Latvia,[19]Lithuania,[20]Moldova (1 October 2012 – 4 June 2013)[21] andUkraine[22][23][24] havebanned communist symbols including this one. A similar law was considered inEstonia,[25] but it eventually failed in a parliamentary committee.[26] In Ukraine, the legislature equates communist symbols including hammer with sickle toNazi swastika symbols.[27][28]
In 2010, theLithuanian,Latvian,Bulgarian,Hungarian,Romanian, andCzech 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 bannedHolocaust denial. TheEuropean 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.[29]
InIndonesia, the display of communist symbols is banned and the country'sCommunist party was also banned by decree of presidentSuharto, following the1965–1966 killings of communists in which over 500,000 people were killed.[32][33] In January 2018, an activist protesting againstBumi Resources displayed the hammer and sickle, was accused of spreading communism, and later jailed.[34][35]
InPoland, dissemination of items which are "media of fascist, communist or other totalitarian symbolism" was criminalized in 1997. However, theConstitutional Tribunal found this sanction to be unconstitutional in 2011.[36]
InUnicode, the "hammer and sickle" symbol is U+262D (☭). It is part of theMiscellaneous Symbols (2600–26FF) code block. It was added to Unicode 1.1 in 1993.[37]
^Stites, Richard (1997)."The Role of Ritual and Symbols". In Acton, Edward; Cherniaev, Vladimir Iu.; Rosenberg, William G. (eds.).Critical companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914-1921. Indiana University Press. pp. 568–569.ISBN978-0-253-33333-9.
^Lempert, David (1996).Daily Life in a Crumbling Empire: The Absorption of Russia into the World Economy. Columbia University Press/ Eastern European Monographs.ISBN0-880-33341-3.
^မြန်မာဖတ်စာ ဒုတိယတန်း (Grade-3) [Myanmar Textbook for Second Standard (Grade-3)] (in Burmese). Ministry of Education, Government of the Union of Myanmar. 2006. p. 1.
^"Act C of 2012 on the Criminal Code, Section 335: Use of Symbols of Totalitarianism"(PDF).Ministry of Interior of Hungary. p. 97. Retrieved21 February 2017.Any person who: a) distributes, b) uses before the public at large, or c) publicly exhibits, the swastika, the insignia of the SS, the arrow cross, the sickle and hammer, the five-pointed red star or any symbol depicting the above so as to breach public peace – specifically in a way to offend the dignity of victims of totalitarian regimes and their right to sanctity – is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by custodial arrest, insofar as they did not result in a more serious criminal offense.
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