Communist symbolism

Communist symbolism represents a variety of themes, including revolution, the proletariat, the peasantry, agriculture, or international solidarity.

In Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine, communist symbols are banned and displays in public for non-educational use are considered a criminal offense.

[2] The hammer and sickle was first used during the 1917 Russian Revolution, but it did not appear on the official flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until 1924.

The red five-pointed star is a symbol of the ultimate triumph of the ideas of communism on the five (inhabited, excluding Antarctica) continents of the globe.

In Soviet Russia, the five-pointed star symbolized the protection of peacetime labor by the Red Army (again, like in Ancient Rome, where Mars was also the protector of the agricultural workers).

The star symbolized protection, while the plough and the hammer were read as a union of peasants and workers.

[3][4] In the succeeding years, the five-pointed red star came to be considered a symbol of communism as well as of broader socialism in general.

It was widely used by anti-fascist resisting parties and underground socialist organizations in Europe leading up to and during World War II.

During the war, the red star was prominently used as a symbol of the Red Army troops of the Soviet Union countering the invading forces of Nazi Germany and wiping them out of Eastern Europe; achieving absolute victory, and ending the war at the Battle of Berlin.

Its original French refrain is C'est la lutte finale/Groupons-nous et demain/L'Internationale/Sera le genre humain (English: This is the final struggle/Let's group together and tomorrow/The International/Will be the human race).

The marriage of Catholic tradition, the biblical reference being integral to the flag's design, with socialist concepts, like the working class and the oppressor forcing them to take up their plowshares as arms, leaves the Starry Plough flag with complexity and nuanced implications, which culminate in a very wide range of interpretations.

[19][20] Many communist governments purposely diverged from the traditional forms of European heraldry in order to distance themselves from the monarchies that they usually replaced, with actual coats of arms being seen as symbols of the monarchs.