Hammer and sickle

The hammer and sickle (☭) or sickle and hammer (Russian: Серп и молот, serp i molot) is a Communist symbol that was conceived during the Russian Revolution. At the time of creation, the hammer stood for industrial laborers and the sickle for the peasantry; combined they stood for the worker-peasant alliance for socialism and against reactionary movements and foreign intervention.

After World War I and the Russian Civil War, the hammer and sickle became more widely used as a symbol for peaceful 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. Today, even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the hammer and sickle remains commonplace in Russia and other former union republics, but its display is prohibited in some other former socialist countries, as well as in countries where communism is banned by the official law.

Farm and worker instruments and tools have long been used as symbols for proletarian struggle. A popular ancestor to the hammer and sickle was a hammer on a plough, with the same meaning (unity of peasants and workers).

In Ireland, the symbol of the plough remains in use. The Starry Plough banner was originally used by the Irish Citizen Army, a Socialist, Republican Workers militia. James Connolly, co-founder of the Irish Citizen Army with Jack White, said the significance of the banner was that a free Ireland would control its own destiny from the plough to the stars. A sword is forged into the plough to symbolise the end of war with the establishment of a Socialist International. This was unveiled in 1914 and flown by the Irish Citizen Army during the 1916 Easter Rising.

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