Symbolic Confusion: More Hammers & Sickles

1975 Amharic edition of the EPRP Program

I'm pleased to present another gallery of images from the Ethiopian Revolution featuring the use of the iconic Hammer and Sickle by competing sides in the revolution. Other galleries of images and some explanation of the politics behind these images can be found by clicking the “Symbolic Confusion” label at right. If you click on the images you can see them larger.

Above are the front and back covers from the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party program, as issued in Amharic on the public announcement of the party’s existence in 1975. The full document can be read in Amharic only on the Ya Tewlid website. Click around for the link to a PDF. This cover bears a grid where someone has used an old-fashioned analog trick for enlarging art for a poster or banner.

EPRP logo from “Abyot”

Pro-EPRP poster, probably USA ca 1975–76

“Long live the worker peasant alliance!” reads the solidarity poster at right.

Back cover of POMOA’s “Abyotawit Ityopya”

POMOA was the “Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs,” the Derg’s office for building support, one might say for co-opting, support among Ethiopia's left organizations. POMOA established EMALEDH, the Union of Ethiopian Marx-Leninist Organizations, in what proved to be a futile attempt at “partybuilding.” EPRP rejected participation in both POMOA and EMALEDH. Meison, Waz League, Echat, and Malerid joined with the military party Abyotawit Seded, though all were eventually serially purged from EMALEDH during the “Red Terror” except Seded. Abyotawit Ityopya was the journal published by POMOA, and this version of hammer and sickle was the one used by EMALEDH.

An Amharic edition of EMALEDH's
“Yehibret Demtse”

An EMALEDH sign featured on an issue
of “Abyotawit Ityopya”

Two more items from EMALEDH: An Amharic issue of their journal (I've previously featured an English language cover of one), and EMALEDH supporters holding up a sign at a rally featured on a cover of Abyotawit Ityopya from 1977.

Below are some further uses of the hammer and sickle. First is an illustration symbolizing unity of worker and peasant, but from the Derg’s perspective, again an issue of POMOA’s Abyotawit Ityopya. The worker and peasant are rather gruesomely using the hammer and sickle to dangle three symbolic corpses, which makes sense since this is from the height of the Red Terror. After that are several militia-themed items from the Derg. First, “Revolutionary Unity Through Struggle” with a fairly modernist design. Followed by a cover of Milisya, the Derg’s militia publication, showing the militia logo incorporating a hammer and sickle. Finally, a photo showing an Ethiopian woman passing under a poster of a worker and soldier bearing a hammer and sickle flag, date unknown. The military mobilizations against the Somali invasion of 1977-1978, and subsequently against Eritrean rebels, proved to be an effective tool for undercutting the civilian left.

With the abandonment of EMALEDH and POMOA and the establishment of the “Committee to Organize the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia” and the eventual founding of the “Workers Party of Ethiopia” by Mengistu in the 1980s, a version of the hammer and sickle went on to become an enshrouded national emblem.

A cover of “Abyotawit Ityopya” from 1976

“Revolutionary Victory Through Struggle”

A cover of “Milisya” from 1979.

I'd like to express my thanks to donors of graphic material.