hammer and sickle

The hammer and sickle (Unicode: ) is a communist symbol representing proletarian solidarity between agricultural and industrial 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 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 self-declared socialist states, such as China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos, 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 hammer and sickle is prohibited. History Inception In 1917, Vladimir Lenin and Anatoly Lunacharsky held a competition to create a Soviet emblem. The winning design was a hammer and sickle on top of a globe in rays of the sun, surrounded by a wreath of grain and under a five-pointed star, with the inscription "proletarians of the world, unite!" in six languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani). It originally featured a sword, but Lenin strongly objected, disliking the militaristic connotations. The winning designer was Yevgeny Ivanovich Kamzolkin (1885–1957). On 6 July 1923, the 2nd session of the Central Executive Committee (CIK) adopted the emblem.