OKNA-TASS poster collection

The Russian Telegraph Agency (Rosta) was the state news agency in the Soviet Union (1918-35). After the creation of the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) in 1925, it remained the news agency of Soviet Russia. "Rosta Windows," or Satirical Rosta Windows, were stencil-replicated propaganda posters created by artists and poets within the Rosta system in 1919-21. They were designed to encourage patriotism and support for the war effort and to communicate recent developments to citizens.

During World War II, this approach was reproduced as TASS Windows (OKNA-TASS). The TASS Windows Studio began production in June 1941, with many well known Soviet graphic artists and poets working together to create poster images and text that reflected the most recent news from the Soviet Information Bureau. American photographer Margaret Bourke-White visited the Moscow "poster factory" on Kuznetsky Most Street and described it as "a twenty-four-hour beehive of many of the best writers, poets, artists, and caricaturists in the country." Although inconsistencies in numbering make it difficult to say with certainty how many designs were produced, the posters are numbered through no. 1485, which was produced in June 1945.

The designs featured graphical simplicity suitable for viewing from distance and often used lubok (woodcut) style sequences of pictures, similar to modern comics. The posters were not printed, but rather painted by hand with cutout stencils made from cardboard by a team of mostly female artists who could each turn out hundreds of posters a day. In Moscow, citizens saw a fresh poster every day. Once the required number of posters was painted in Moscow, the stencils were sent to another city and thus put in circulation throughout the Soviet Union. More complex posters were also issued monthly, as were filmed versions of the posters that could be projected onto screens and walls in hospitals, factories, and on the war front.