Soviet Vintage Posters

Explore our world-leading selection of Soviet Vintage Posters.

Although posters were produced in Russia before the Revolution, they were overshadowed by the remarkable propaganda posters of the Soviets. Lenin takes responsibility for creating the first truly modern propaganda machine, from postage stamps and Mayday parades to monumental sculptures. Perhaps its most colorful, dramatic and pervasive form was the poster. 

The Soviet art of propaganda falls into five main periods:

1.  The Bolshevik Era (1917-1921) was a life and death struggle for the Bolsheviks and their ideology. The propaganda poster was everywhere, as the Bolsheviks struggled to win the Civil War against the Whites and fought the Poles over control of the Ukraine and parts of modern day Belarus. The early Soviet poster - an incredible 3600 designs - was remarkable for its revolutionary fervor and biting wit. Powerful visual symbols were invented, like the red star and hammer and sickle.

2.  The New Economic Policy or NEP (1921 - 1927) was a period of recovery and relative freedom for a country ravaged by war, famine and bitter discontent. The period is dominated by advertising for the flourishing class of tolerated small capitalists, and a remarkable outpouring of silent film posters for the entertainment and education of the masses. These Roaring Twenties posters would revolutionize the art of the 20th Century with their avant-garde Constructivist style that matched the spirit of films like Battleship Potemkin and Man with a Movie Camera.

3.  The First and Second Five Year Plans (1928-1937) were Stalin's draconian push to convert Russia into a fully communist industrialized power. The jarring, pioneering photomontage posters of the First Five Year plan echoed the heroic side of this effort, only to be followed by the purges of the late '30s and the retreat from avant-garde art in the Second Plan period to the more prosaic Social Realism.

4.  The Great Patriotic War (1939 - 1945) as World War II was known in the Soviet Union, brought a revival of the great age of the Bolshevik poster. Hitler's all-out attack in 1941 forced a return to the symbolism of the Civil War era to fan the patriotic fires of the heartland.

5.  The Cold War (1946-1984).  The Cold War had three periods:

Early Cold War  (1946 - 1953).  Stalin dominated the recovery from WWII domestically and abroad with vigorous economic programs, consolidation of the Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe, the Berlin Airlift and the Soviet Atomic bomb. In posters, the period brought a return to "Social Realism", with Utopian views of Russia and Joseph Stalin predominating.

Thaw Era  (1954 - 1963).  The death of Stalin led to relaxation in the Soviet Union as Khrushev consolidated power. He focused on internal development and peaceful coexistence with the West (despite testy showdowns like the Cuban Missile Crisis). 

Stagnation Era  (1964 - 1984). Economic stagnation set in as Brezhnev and his successors were unable to change the increasingly bureaucratic logjam of the Soviet State. During the Sixties and Seventies, the best images featured Vietnam and imperialism around the globe and the space and arms races.

6. Perestroika (1985 - 1991) Gorbachov ushered in an era of openness (glasnost) to spur the Soviet economy with market based incentives and promote world peace. By 1991,the failure of his economic plan was complete as the Soviet Union collapsed.  The themes of the posters of the period likewise broke with the past. Primary subjects included glasnost, economic restructuring, defeating bureaucracy and Stalinist reactionaries, alcoholism, and disarmament with the US. For more, see our online exhibition.

For more, visit our past gallery exhibitions: 

War & Revolution - Propaganda Posters from WWI America and Revolutionary Russia

Revolution By Design - Soviet Posters 1917 - 1937

War and Peace - Tass Agency Posters from the Soviet Union 1941 - 1946 

Explore our Russian poster collection consisting of 500 original vintage posters from the 1900s through the 1990s from around the globe. Most popular searches:

Browse by ERA:

Pre-WWII (1900 - 1938)

WWII and Cold War (1939 - 1984)

Perestroika (1985 - 1991)

   
Browse by SUBJECT:

War & Propaganda

Work & Workers

TASS panels

Film