State Emblem of the Soviet Union | |
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Details | |
Armiger | Union of Soviet Socialist Republics |
Adopted | 6 July 1923 |
Crest | Red five-pointed star with golden border |
Escutcheon | Hammer and sickle, globe and the rising sun. An emblem is surrounded by ears of wheat wrapped around a red ribbon with the state motto in all 15 languages of the Soviet Union. |
Motto | Workers of the world, unite! |
The State Emblem of the Soviet Union (Russian: Государственный герб Советского Союза, Gosudarstvenny gerb Sovyetskovo Soyuza) was adopted in 1923 and was used until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Although it technically is an emblem rather than a coat of arms, since it does not follow traditional heraldic rules, in Russian it is called герб (gerb), the word used for a traditional coat of arms.
It was the first state insignia created in the style known as socialist heraldry, a style also seen in e.g. the emblem of the People's Republic of China.
The project of the first version of the state emblem was accepted on 6 July 1923 by the 2nd session of the Central Executive Committee (CIK) and the version was completed on September 22 of that year. This design was fixed in the 1924 Soviet Constitution: "The State Emblem of the USSR is composed of a sickle and a hammer on a globe depicted in the rays of the sun and framed by ears of wheat, with the inscription "proletariats of the world, unite!" in six languages - Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani. At the top of the Emblem is a five-pointed star."
Ivan Dubasov was an important contributor when creating the emblem.
According to the 1936 Soviet Constitution, the USSR consisted of eleven republics. Hence the major new version's difference from the previous one was eleven ribbons bearing USSR State Motto inscriptions in eleven languages.