Category:Okna TASS

English: Okna TASS (Russian Окна ТАСС, "Windows of TASS") were Soviet propaganda posters produced daily by creative teams working for TASS, the state-owned news agency in the Soviet Union, during the Great Patriotic War, starting when Hitler's troops invaded the USSR during World War II.

Well-known artists and poets, such as the Kukryniksy (Кукрыниксы) cartoonist trio and artists V. Lebedev (В. В. Лебедев), G. K. Savitskii (Г. К. Савицкий), P. P. Sokolov-Skalia (П. П. Соколов-Скаля), S. N. Kostin (С. Н. Костин), V. A. Milashevsky (В. А. Милашевский), A. A. Przhetslavsky (А. А. Пржецлавский), M. M. Cheremnykh (М. М. Черемных), V. Deni (В. Дени), N. E. Radlov (Н. Э. Ра́длов), A. A. Radakov (А. А. Радако́в), M. M. Shcheglov (М. Щеглов), P. A. Sargsyan (П. А. Саркисян), and P. M. Shukhmin (П. М. Шухмин), and writers as Demyan Bedny, Vasily Lebedev-Kumach, and Samuil Marshak, created about 1,500 designs and texts between 1941 and 1945, featuring anti-Nazi caricatures and Socialist Realist art to support the Red Army and the war effort.

The "Okna TASS" posters were made in sections on separate sheets for easier handling, painted by hand using stencil printing, and produced in runs of just a few to up to 1000 copies as the technique improved towards the end of the war.The large-scale, bright-coloured and hand-assembled posters were displayed on stands and in shop windows around the country raising the citizens' spirits. The satire and humor made the posters popular.

"Okna TASS" were issued in Moscow and served as models for similar colourful, satirical and patriotic "window posters" produced in other Soviet cities, including Tashkent, Baku, Frunze, Ashkhabad, Tomsk, Saratov, Murmansk, Khabarovsk, Omsk, and Sverdlovsk. The "Okna TASS" posters were also distributed abroad to present the USSR positively to new allies, including the United States.

The window posters of TASS resemble the traditional Russian lubki, popular prints with simple graphics and stories, the "ROSTA Windows" posters (Окна РО́СТА), wall newspapers and agitprop posters produced by the news agency's predecessor, ROSTA, during the early years of the Soviet Union, and the "IZOGIZ Windows" posters (Окна ИЗОГИЗ) of the State Art Publishing Agency from the 1930s.

Read more here:

• Power Windows; TASS Propaganda Posters by Xenia Vytuleva
• Soviet Posters from the Great Patriotic War 1941-5 by Professor D.W. Spring
• The personality cult of Stalin in Soviet posters, 1929–1953
• The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979)