★ soviet.nvim

Light and dark Neovim colorschemes inspired by Soviet visual culture: book covers, editorial posters, enamel signs, technical diagrams, metro mosaics, and cartographic graphics.

Warm graphite and newspaper paper form the foundation. Printing red is reserved for primary accents, while burgundy, brass, ochre, enamel blue, and turquoise organize syntax and interface states. Olive, khaki, and steel form a quiet cartographic layer behind the code. This is an interpretation for the screen, not a reconstruction of historical printing inks.

• soviet-dark — layered warm graphite with clear, restrained contrast.
• soviet-light — aged newspaper paper with darker printing inks.

Screenshots

Dark

Light

Requirements

Neovim 0.10+ and a terminal with true color support. No plugin dependencies. The colorscheme enables termguicolors and sets background for its variant.

Installation

vim.pack

Requires Neovim 0.12+ for the built-in vim.pack plugin manager. Add this to your init.lua:

vim.pack.add({
  { src = "https://github.com/rezniqov/soviet.nvim" },
})

require("soviet").setup({}) -- Optional; add your settings here.
vim.cmd.colorscheme("soviet-dark")
-- vim.cmd.colorscheme("soviet-light")

Restart Neovim and confirm installation if prompted.

lazy.nvim

Add this plugin spec to your existing lazy.nvim setup:

{
  "rezniqov/soviet.nvim",
  lazy = false,
  priority = 1000,
  opts = {}, -- Add your soviet.nvim settings here.
  config = function(_, opts)
    require("soviet").setup(opts)
    vim.cmd.colorscheme("soviet-dark")
    -- vim.cmd.colorscheme("soviet-light")
  end,
}

Restart Neovim to install the plugin. Choose your default variant in the config function. If you organize specs into imported files, wrap the spec above in return { ... }.

LazyVim

Soviet automatically detects plugins registered with lazy.nvim. Add this to lua/plugins/colorscheme.lua:

return {
  {
    "rezniqov/soviet.nvim",
    lazy = false,
    priority = 1000,
    opts = {},
  },
  {
    "LazyVim/LazyVim",
    opts = {
      colorscheme = "soviet-dark",
      -- colorscheme = "soviet-light",
    },
  },
}

When loaded by LazyVim, Soviet reads lazy.nvim's plugin registry and generates highlight groups only for installed integrations. No additional LazyVim-specific configuration is required.

Usage

Choose a variant after installing the plugin:

:colorscheme soviet-dark
:colorscheme soviet-light

With vim.pack, keep your choice in init.lua after the installation block:

vim.cmd.colorscheme("soviet-dark")
-- vim.cmd.colorscheme("soviet-light")

The variant is selected by its colorscheme name. There is no OS synchronization or style option. Configuration is optional.

Configuration

With vim.pack, call setup() before applying the colorscheme. With lazy.nvim, put the same settings in the opts table of the rezniqov/soviet.nvim spec; the config function above passes them to setup(). All defaults are shown below:

require("soviet").setup({
  transparent = false,
  terminal_colors = true,
  styles = {
    comments = { italic = true },
    keywords = {},
    functions = {},
    strings = {},
    variables = {},
    sidebars = "dark", -- "dark", "normal", or "transparent"
    floats = "dark", -- "dark", "normal", or "transparent"
  },
  dim_inactive = false,
  lualine_bold = true,
  cache = true,
  plugins = {
    all = package.loaded.lazy == nil,
    auto = true,
  },
  integrations = {}, -- Legacy aliases; prefer plugins.
  palette = {},
  -- on_colors = function(colors) end,
  -- on_highlights = function(highlights, colors) end,
})
vim.cmd.colorscheme("soviet-dark")

Each setup() call merges your options with fresh defaults. It saves the configuration; reapply the chosen colorscheme to update highlights.

transparent removes the main editor background. Sidebar and floating-window backgrounds are controlled independently by styles.sidebars and styles.floats. Setting terminal_colors = false leaves existing ANSI palette settings untouched.

With lazy.nvim, plugins.auto = true enables integrations found in its registry. Outside lazy.nvim, plugins.all defaults to true, so plugin highlight groups are defined eagerly. You can override either behavior by group name or lazy.nvim plugin name:

plugins = {
  all = false,
  auto = true,
  snacks = true,
  ["render-markdown.nvim"] = false,
  telescope = { enabled = true },
}

The old integrations table is still accepted for backwards compatibility; new configurations should use plugins.

Custom colors and highlights

require("soviet").setup({
  styles = { comments = { italic = false } },
  palette = { property = "#C8C1AA" },
  on_colors = function(c)
    c.border_highlight = c.brass
  end,
  on_highlights = function(hl, c)
    hl.CursorLineNr = { fg = c.brass, bold = false }
    hl["@keyword.return"] = { fg = c.burgundy, bold = true }
    hl.TelescopeBorder = { fg = c.brass, bg = c.bg_light }
  end,
})
vim.cmd.colorscheme("soviet-dark")

The on_highlights callback runs after all highlight definitions are assembled and before they are applied. Replace a linked group's entire table when changing its colors: a link takes precedence over other attributes.

Palette overrides apply to both variants. on_colors runs after derived colors are created; on_highlights then receives the complete color table. Using its colors keeps highlights consistent with the active variant.

Retrieve a fresh palette, including your overrides, with:

local colors = require("soviet").get_palette()
local dark = require("soviet").get_palette("dark")
local light = require("soviet").get_palette("light")

Without an argument, this returns the active variant, or dark before either colorscheme has loaded. Modifying the returned table does not change the theme.

🎨 Palette

Role	Dark	Light
Editor background	#292727	#DDD0B8
Sidebar / statusline	#1F1D1D	#C9B99F
Elevated surface	#353232	#EBDFC9
Cursor line	#403A3A	#C3B197
Selection	#554B54	#C8AEB2
Border	#746666	#8E7C69
Text	#D8CFC4	#382F2B
Bright text	#E9DFD0	#292626
Comments	#A3A187	#5B5A47
Keywords / booleans — burgundy	#C58F9D	#87455A
Functions / search — brass	#D1B078	#74541C
Strings / characters — green ink	#65AA88	#2B674D
Cartographic contours — khaki	#B1A178	#675834
Numbers / warnings — ochre	#D29A69	#864A20
Types / classes / information — enamel blue	#5B93BC	#36739C
Preprocessor / map labels — steel	#7899A0	#405B62
Operators / secondary text	#B7AAA3	#615751
Properties	#C6B8AA	#685448
Builtins — industrial turquoise	#45A39E	#176466
Hints / cartographic grid — olive	#A8AC7D	#585C3B
Added lines / ANSI green	#B8BA73	#4B602D
ANSI bright green	#CED08B	#426020
Primary headings / Normal mode — printing red	#E36A5B	#9C382E
Errors	#EF7565	#A62D24
Removed lines / substitutions — dark red	#A14C45	#843C35
Brown	#B28A75	#74523F

Comments and structural elements are deliberately subdued. Adjust palette.comment, palette.muted, palette.olive, or palette.border to suit your display.

Integrations

Built-in coverage includes Vim syntax, Tree-sitter, LSP semantic tokens, diagnostics, inlay hints, diff views, spell checking, and terminal ANSI colors.

Plugin coverage includes Aerial, ALE, Alpha, Barbar, Blink, Bufferline, Codeium, Copilot, Dashboard, DAP, Flash, fzf-lua, GitGutter, Gitsigns, GrugFar, Headlines, Hop, Illuminate, indent-blankline, Lazy, Leap, Lspsaga, the Mini modules, Navic, neo-tree, Neogit, Neotest, Noice, nvim-cmp, nvim-notify, nvim-scrollbar, nvim-tree, Octo, Rainbow Delimiters, render-markdown, Sidekick, Snacks, Supermaven, Telescope, Treesitter Context, Trouble, Vimwiki, WhichKey, Yanky, and related integrations. Oil support is retained as well.

Core Vim syntax, Tree-sitter, LSP semantic tokens, diagnostics, inlay hints, diff views, and completion-kind groups are always available. Integrations define highlights only; they never load the corresponding plugins.

Plugin UI uses brass and ochre as its working accents, with burgundy and turquoise for secondary states. Printing red appears only at primary focal points and critical states. Enamel blue is reserved for types, file paths, information, and Insert mode so it does not dominate LazyVim's interface.

Bold keywords and types create a compact typographic hierarchy while functions, variables, and body text keep their normal weight. Headings progress through red, burgundy, brass, enamel blue, olive, and muted ink. Dashboard integrations follow the same structure with red headers, brass shortcuts, enamel-blue icons, and olive descriptions.

A subdued cartographic layer uses olive grids, khaki contours, and steel labels for line numbers, folds, indent guides, inlay hints, Aerial, MiniMap, Neotest, and Snacks. It stays visually behind syntax and primary interface accents.

LSP semantic tokens use the same roles as Tree-sitter. The final result depends on the parser's captures and the language server's tokens.

Lualine

Apply the colorscheme before configuring lualine:

require("lualine").setup({ options = { theme = "soviet" } })

The lualine theme soviet follows the active variant. Fixed soviet-dark and soviet-light themes are also available. Lualine's default theme = "auto" discovers them by colorscheme name. Normal uses printing red, Insert enamel blue, Visual burgundy, Replace signal red, Command brass, and Terminal turquoise.

The plugin clears its lualine theme cache when loading a colorscheme, allowing lualine's ColorScheme handler to pick up the new palette.

Terminal colors and LazyGit

The ANSI palette applies to newly created terminal buffers. An existing terminal or LazyGit session may retain its previous colors after switching variants. Close that terminal buffer and create a new one to refresh its palette. Changing the colorscheme does not restart terminal processes.

📚 Structure

In-editor documentation is available through :help soviet, :help soviet-setup, :help soviet-palette, and :help soviet-lualine.

colors/soviet-dark.lua          Dark colorscheme entry point
colors/soviet-light.lua         Light colorscheme entry point
lua/soviet/init.lua             Public API and highlight application
lua/soviet/config.lua           Defaults and configuration
lua/soviet/palette.lua          Both palettes
lua/soviet/colors.lua           Derived semantic colors
lua/soviet/groups/              Core and plugin highlight groups
lua/soviet/util.lua             Color blending and highlight cache
lua/soviet/lualine.lua          Lualine palette builder
lua/lualine/themes/soviet.lua   Lualine theme for the active variant
lua/lualine/themes/soviet-*.lua  Fixed lualine variants
doc/soviet.txt                  :help soviet

The plugin has no timers, autocommands, or OS preference readers. It updates highlight groups, colors_name, color options, and optionally terminal_color_0 through terminal_color_15. The generated highlight table is cached by variant by default; set cache = false to disable this.

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.