If there’s a time to immerse yourself in 20th Century Eastern European architecture, it’s now.
Rusanivka new residential district, Kiev, Ukraine. Date unknown
Writer and journalist Owen Hatherley explores cityscapes of the USSR and its empire and presents some highlights from his collection of fascinating postcards.
Hatherley explains his approach to take quick snapshots that showed spaces being used as they are rather than as grandiose monuments to a vanished civilisation.
The centre of Lazdynai, Vilnius. 1986 postcard
“The postcards here came from a similar impulse. Mostly found in second hand bookshops in Warsaw, many of them are photos of quite mundane places – housing estates, TV towers, modern public buildings – often rendered in strange, cheap colours, giving an undeniably nostalgic effect.”
Ostankino Tower, Moscow. 1973
“Some countries seemed to offer more ‘socialist’ postcards than others – postcards from the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria or Crimea offer images of sun, sea and concrete not massively dissimilar from the Costa del Sol.”
Stasi-controlled Interhotels Newa and Bastei, Dresden. Date unknown
“In much of the USSR, Poland and Czechoslovakia, though, you could buy a postcard of a cultural centre in a mining town, or of a prefabricated housing estate on the outskirts of a provincial city.”
Albena resort, Bulgaria. Postcard dated 1970
“They were little reminders that these ordinary spaces were once regarded as something rather special – places that if you visited or got rehoused in them, you’d want to write home about.”
Landscapes of Communism is out now, published by Allen Lane.
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