Cold War era soviet propaganda posters.

The Moscow Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics and the Shanghai Propaganda Art Gallery contain an open secret; a trove of Soviet artwork dedicated to peace and reconciliation. Not only did the devastating US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki spark a global nuclear arms race, but the USSR fiercely opposed the escalation of tensions leading up to the Cold War with a fierce campaign of Soviet realism, expressing defiance towards Western imperialism and impending nuclear warfare. To celebrate our Soviet tee lineup, we’ve shared a few exemplary designs from the vaults of Communist history, just in time for the October Revolution centenary.

The simmering conflicts of the Cold War demanded the attention of activists with a sense of urgency never seen before in history. The Manhattan project’s ‘successes’ doomed humanity to new forms of warfare, from prolonged, 4th generational conflicts to outright nuclear disasters. To cull these hostilities, the Soviet Union ushered in a new wave of modern art tasked with de-escalating aggressions between superpowers by condemning the rise of atomic weaponry. In celebration of the October Revolution centenary, ALLRIOT revisits some of the lesser-known examples of Soviet Realist art which capture the zeitgeist of the proletarian struggle against ever-increasing US militarism.