Rot Front

The salute was most widely known throughout the world as a symbol of the fight against fascism in the 1930s, especially during the Spanish Civil War. The gesture symbolized the unity of the proletariat of all countries and the readiness to fight to the end for the victory of the International.

The greeting was also very common in the USSR among Komsomol members, communists and youth in general from the end of the 1920s until the end of the Spanish Civil War (1939); it was also used during the Great Patriotic War (in particular, Bulgarians welcomed the entry of the Red Army in September 1944[2] and prisoners of Nazi concentration camps).

After the war, the gesture became an informal symbol of many organizations of prisoners of German concentration camps. In the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, it was used not only as a party greeting, but was also mandatory in the armed forces of the NSRA and in the pioneer organization.

Currently, the gesture has gained popularity among left-wing radicals.

Already used in 1917 by the American revolutionary-syndicalist trade union Industrial Workers of the World, the graphic symbol of the clenched fist was popularized after World War II by the Mexican Folk Graphic Workshop and adopted by many political movements - initially predominantly on the radical left.