Excerpts from the book

HERALDRY OF THE WORLD

Written and illustrated by

Carl Alexander von Volborth , K.St.J., A.I.H.

Copenhagen 1973

Internet version edited by Andrew Andersen, Ph.D.

Soviet and Communist Symbols

(pp. 156-157, 233-234, 93-94, 124-125 and 148)

During the same period it became customary to frame a civic coat of arms with a wreath of foliage or two green branches or ears of corn. It seems probable that the wreath of corn bound with ribbon in the arms of the Soviet Union (Fig. 833) - since copied by nearly all the communist states - is a continuation of this practice from Czarist times. The Russian Revolution of 1917 meant of course an end to all family arms.

833. The arms of the Soviet Union. After the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1917 this emblem was composed, contrary to former heraldic traditions, and has since then become the model for the arms of most other Communist countries (see below) and even for some non-Communist ones, such as the Republic of Italy, (see Fig. 675). The phrase 'Workers of the world unite' is printed in gold lettering on the ribbon in the fifteen official languages of the Soviet Union (now only fourteen).
834. Arms of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic.	835. Arms of the Estonian Socialist Soviet Republic.
493. Arms of East Germany. The Deutsche Demokratische Republik. from 1955	610. Arms of the Hungarian People's Republic as it was from 1949 until the Rising in 1956. After that time the arms were changed once again to a more traditional form.
664. The arms of Czechoslovakia since 1960.	675. The arms of the Italian Republic

All Soviet republics base their coat of arms on this pattern. A similar style is characteristic of the arms of East Germany (Fig. 493), Rumania, Jugoslavia and (until 1956)* Hungary (Fig. 610) and, in Asia, the arms of the Chinese People's Republic (Fig. 16), the Mongolian People's Republic and North Korea. Bulgaria and Albania have retained their old coats of arms (a lion and a double-headed eagle respectively), but within a Soviet-inspired frame¬work; Czechoslovakia has also retained its old lion, but with non-traditional accessories (Fig. 664). Of all the Communist states Poland is the only one to have kept its old coat of arms almost unchanged (see Fig. 795).

National arms on the other hand continued to an even greater extent, although in a different form. The Czarist double-headed eagle disappeared and the hammer and sickle, symbol of the industrial and agricultural classes, took its place. In the arms of the Soviet Union the hammer and sickle are placed with the globe as background, and for the people of the world the red star of the Soviet heralded a new dawn, a fact made comprehensible to all by its composition (click here for the Soviet and communist symbols).

The position of civic heraldry today is not yet clear, but it certainly arouses interest. In recent years numerous publications with illustrations and information about the old civic arms from before 1917 have appeared in the Soviet Union, and it is quite possible that those which do not contain Czarist or religious devices, but are politically neutral, such as Figs 831 and 832, may be adopted once again.

832. City arms of Nijni Novgorod, 1871.

831. City arms of Ufa, 1782