The term 'HAMMER and sickle' is a symbol of the Soviet Union and its communist ideology. It consists of a HAMMER, which represents the working class, and a sickle, which represents the peasantry. The HAMMER and sickle were first used during the Russian Revolution in 1917 and became the official emblem of the Soviet Union in 1922. The symbol was widely used throughout the Soviet Union and its satellite states until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.