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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue Orange" data-source="post: 8578781" data-attributes="member: 7025997">Volume 4, under magical items there's a hammer of freedom (with the inscription "nothing to lose but our chains") and a worker's sickle.I'm not sure Russians would consider the hammer and sickle patriotic at this point (though most Russians outside of Russia probably aren't feeling all that patriotic with Putin's invasion). Current national symbols include the flag, the bear, the double-headed eagle on the coat of arms, and the chamomile flower (at least according to Wikipedia). The few Russians I talked to didn't seem to have fond memories of the Soviet period, though they weren't fond of Putin either. (Honestly, Russian history is pretty unpleasant.)The hammer and sickle was banned in Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Ukraine in 2010, though apparently Moldova and Hungary later reversed this (and this was pre-Orban). So, it is kind of like the swastika in parts of Europe.Now there were attempts at a 'kinder, gentler' communism (the Eurocommunism that came about in reaction to the crushing of the Prague Spring), but from what I can tell they all turned into social democracy or hardline communism. Whether socialism is the same thing as communism is another story--democratic socialist regimes exist, and don't seem to be all that economically successful but don't turn into genocidal regimes either. (There's an excellent argument to be made that trading some success for equality is moral--laissez-faire capitalism has its own list of horrors-- but I don't want to get into that now.) Basically, there are lots of non-democidal leftist ideologies, but I don't think communism qualifies at this point.</blockquote>

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