page_title: National coat of arms
section_title: Socialist state emblems
hierarchical_section_title: National coat of arms / Types of national coats of arms / Socialist state emblems
caption_attribution_description: English: Soviet Passport Cover c.1991 print
context_page_description: A national coat of arms is a symbol which denotes an independent state in the form of a heraldic achievement. While a national flag is usually used by the population at large and is flown outside and on ships, a national coat of arms is normally considered a symbol of the government or the head of state personally and tends to be used in print, on heraldic china, and as a wall decoration in official buildings. The royal arms of a monarchy, which may be identical to the national arms, are sometimes described as arms of dominion or arms of sovereignty.
  An important use for national coats of arms is as the main symbol on the covers of passports, the document used internationally to prove the citizenship of a person.
  For a symbol to be called a "national coat of arms", it should follow the rules of heraldry. If it does not, then the symbol is not formally a coat of arms but rather a national emblem. However, many unheraldic national emblems are colloquially called national coats of arms anyway, because they are used for the same purposes as national coats of arms.
context_section_description: Many countries which came under the influence of the Soviet Union during the 20th century took after the design of the State Emblem of the Soviet Union, created in the 1920s. The forms followed a very common pattern and since these national emblems were used in the same way as traditional heraldic coats of arms, even if they did not follow the rules of heraldry, they have been called "socialist heraldry". Many of them incorporated symbols of industry and agriculture, the hammer and sickle, a raising sun and the red star of communism. It was not uncommon to show landscapes and weapons, as can be seen in the examples below. When giving up communism, most of these countries returned to traditional heraldry – see for instance the coat of arms of Bulgaria, coat of arms of Georgia, coat of arms of Hungary, and coat of arms of Romania.
  The designs of socialist heraldry also influenced some non-socialist states, such as Italy.
caption: The Soviet Union "socialist coat of arms" on the front cover of a Soviet Union passport
exif: {}