Danube River Cruise #19: Slovakia: Russian Block Apartments, The Iron Curtain

bratislava communist architecture petrzalka. Credit: TheCrowdedPlanet

In this final blog of our visit to Bratislava, Slovakia, we're going to take a look at the Cold War Era Russian cement block housing that still exists there today. This style of building is called a "Panelak" and it's really awful and drab.To make it "more attractive," the property owners have painted these cement apartment buildings in yellow and green (It doesn't help). Here's the story about these buildings and the architecture and you'll learn about the "Iron Curtain": You'll also learn WHEN Slovakia became it's own country..>>>>



The Website called Thecrowdedplanet.com provided a great overview of the drab Soviet-era concrete apartment housing that still stands in Bratislava. It's in a neighborhood called "Petržalka."

PANELAKS - The name of the blocky, cement apartment buildings. 

Soviet block housing in neighborhood called "Petržalka"

The 1960 creative burst came to an end with the Prague Spring, when several architects fell from grace and the regime started promoting functionalist, bare-bones architecture. Looking southwards from the top of the UFO Bridge you’ll notice Petržalka, a neighborhood made up of square, blocky apartment buildings. These panelaks are the iconic Communist time accommodation for the new working classes.

THESE WERE BUILT BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN - These Panelaks were true depictions of Communist life.  They depicted an existence divided between the factory, queuing for food and living in cramped flats on concrete high-rises (and the lift would never work). 

WHY BUILT?  The district was built in the 1970 to house workers of a nearby refinery, and it soon became the most densely state housing development this side of the Iron Curtain. Yet, it was one of the most innovative projects in the whole of Czechoslovakia – besides housing it included transport links, and it was supposed to be surrounded by a network of parks and canals. Needless to say, money ran out. Nowadays,Petržalka is still inhabited by over 100,000 people. 



WHAT IS THE IRON CURTAIN? 
The Iron Curtain is the political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas.

Europe -Iron Curtain (red)divided East from West. Credit: Shutterstock.com.

SLOVAKIA NOT SLOVAKIA THEN - Slovakia was part of Czechloslovakia at the time of the "Iron Curtain" and it fell under Soviet rule.  

WHAT HAPPENED BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN? -
The USSR strictly used the actual and ideological Iron Curtain boundary to keep its people within their preferred ideological control and physical area.
 
WHEN DID THE IRON CURTAIN FALL? - One by one, the Soviets embraced openness and economic restructuring which culminated in the 1989 Revolution in the Eastern Bloc. Poland led the way by electing anti-communist politicians that triggered peaceful anti-communist revolutions that led to the fall of communism.

WHEN DID SLOVAKIA BECOME ITS OWN COUNTRY? - The Dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which took effect on 1 January 1993, was an event that saw the self-determined split of the federal state of Czechoslovakia into the independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

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