The hammer and sickle is a symbol that was adopted during the Russian Revolution as a way to represent the proletariat. It is meant to signify the union of the workers (hammer) and the peasants (sickle) as the alliance that will work towards socialism.
The French Revolution and the American Revolution were almost direct results of Enlightenment thinking. The idea that society is a social contract between the government and the governed stemmed from the Enlightenment as well
