Svit is the only town in the Poprad basin with a birthday. On 9 March 1934 the council of the village of Veľká voted to sell a stretch of meadow to the Baťa company of Zlín; three weeks later the builders arrived, and within two years there was a factory making artificial silk and a planned town of red-brick terraces around it. The name is the factory's initials — and, by luck, an ordinary Slovak word for first light.Svit je jediné mesto v popradskej kotline, ktoré má dátum narodenia. 9. marca 1934 odhlasovalo obecné zastupiteľstvo Veľkej predaj kusa lúky firme Baťa zo Zlína; o tri týždne prišli stavbári a do dvoch rokov tu stála továreň na umelý hodváb a okolo nej plánované mesto tehlových radoviek. Meno je skratkou továrne — a zhodou okolností aj bežné slovenské slovo pre prvé svetlo dňa.
Drag the bar, or pick a year, to see what was happening here then.Potiahnite lištu alebo vyberte rok a uvidíte, čo sa tu vtedy dialo.
CzechoslovakiaČeskoslovensko
Before 1934 there was nothing here but flat ground between the villages of Batizovce and Veľká, with the Košice–Bohumín railway along one edge and a halt on it called Batizovce. On 9 March 1934 the council of Veľká agreed to sell the land to the Baťa company of Zlín, the shoe firm that was then building factories and whole towns across Czechoslovakia. Building began three weeks later. Baťa wanted its own supply of viscose — artificial silk, spun out of wood pulp — rather than buying it in, and this site had water, a main-line railway and empty room.Pred rokom 1934 tu nebolo nič, len rovina medzi Batizovcami a Veľkou, po okraji Košicko-bohumínska železnica a na nej zastávka s menom Batizovce. 9. marca 1934 sa zastupiteľstvo Veľkej dohodlo na predaji pozemku firme Baťa zo Zlína, obuvníckemu podniku, ktorý vtedy staval továrne a celé mestá po celom Československu. O tri týždne sa začalo stavať. Baťa chcel mať vlastný viskózový hodváb — umelé vlákno spriadané z drevnej buničiny — a nekupovať ho; tento pozemok mal vodu, hlavnú trať a dosť voľného miesta.
By 7 November 1935 more than forty houses were standing and around seven hundred people were working on the site; production of viscose began in February 1936. On 29 January 1937 the settlement was given an official name — Svit, an acronym of the Slovak viscose works, and at the same time an ordinary Slovak word for the first light of morning. The plan was Baťa's standard one and it is still legible on the ground: a grid of flat-roofed red-brick terraces, wide green strips between them, a boulevard running straight to the works gate, and company schools, a hotel, a cinema and a sports ground in the same functionalist style. Housing was graded by rank, and the geometry made that visible to everybody.Do 7. novembra 1935 tu stálo vyše štyridsať domov a na stavbe pracovalo okolo sedemsto ľudí; výroba viskózy sa rozbehla vo februári 1936. 29. januára 1937 dostala osada úradné meno — Svit, skratku slovenských viskózových tovární a zároveň bežné slovenské slovo pre prvé ranné svetlo. Plán bol Baťov typový a dodnes sa dá v teréne prečítať: mriežka tehlových radoviek s plochými strechami, medzi nimi široké zelené pásy, bulvár mieriaci rovno k bráne závodu a k tomu firemné školy, hotel, kino a športový areál v tom istom funkcionalistickom duchu. Bývanie bolo odstupňované podľa postavenia v podniku a geometria to dávala každému najavo.
The works kept growing through the break-up of Czechoslovakia and into the Slovak State: cellophane production started in 1938, and in 1939 hosiery manufacture was moved here from Liptovský Mikuláš. For a state with almost no heavy industry of its own, a modern chemical plant under the Tatras was a strategic asset, and what it made went where the war economy needed it. The company went on doing what company towns do — housing, schooling and feeding its own workforce — which is why the Baťa years are remembered here as a golden age even though they ran straight through the worst decade of the century.Závod rástol ďalej cez rozpad Československa aj v slovenskom štáte: roku 1938 sa začala výroba celofánu a roku 1939 sem presunuli výrobu pančúch z Liptovského Mikuláša. Pre štát, ktorý takmer nemal vlastný ťažký priemysel, bola moderná chemička pod Tatrami strategickým majetkom a to, čo vyrobila, šlo ta, kam to vojnové hospodárstvo potrebovalo. Firma pritom robila to, čo firemné mestá robievajú — bývala, učila a živila vlastných ľudí. Preto sa na Baťove roky spomína ako na zlaté časy, hoci prebehli presne cez najhoršie desaťročie storočia.
The Slovak National Uprising broke out on 29 August 1944. In September insurgents set up an armaments centre in Svit — an industrial town with machine shops is exactly what a rising needs and exactly what an occupier wants back. When the uprising was crushed, German forces held the basin through the autumn and winter. Fighting reached the town as the front moved west, and Svit was liberated on 28 January 1945, the same day as Poprad a few kilometres down the road.Slovenské národné povstanie vypuklo 29. augusta 1944. V septembri zriadili povstalci vo Svite zbrojné stredisko — priemyselné mesto so strojárskymi dielňami je presne to, čo povstanie potrebuje, a presne to, čo chce okupant späť. Po porazení povstania držali kotlinu nemecké jednotky celú jeseň a zimu. Ako sa front posúval na západ, dostali sa boje aj do mesta a Svit bol oslobodený 28. januára 1945, v ten istý deň ako Poprad o pár kilometrov ďalej.
On 4 June 1946 Svit was separated from the municipality of Veľká and became a municipality in its own right — twelve years after the first spade went into the ground. On 1 December 1947 the railway station stopped being called Batizovce and became Svit. The Baťa concern had been taken into state hands, and the family name was scrubbed off everything. What had been a company town became a socialist industrial town, which in daily practice meant many of the same buildings run by different people for different reasons.4. júna 1946 sa Svit oddelil od obce Veľká a stal sa samostatnou obcou — dvanásť rokov po tom, čo tu prvý raz kopli do zeme. 1. decembra 1947 prestala byť železničná stanica Batizovce a stala sa Svitom. Baťov koncern medzitým prevzal štát a meno rodiny zmizlo zo všetkého. Z firemného mesta sa stalo socialistické priemyselné mesto, čo v každodennej praxi znamenalo tie isté budovy vedené inými ľuďmi a z iných dôvodov.
Sport was built into the Baťa system from the beginning — the sports ground went up early, alongside the school and the cinema — and it outlasted the company that paid for it. The basketball club founded in Svit in 1947 won the Czechoslovak league in the 1961/62 season and has been a fixture of Slovak basketball ever since. For a town of a few thousand people that is a strange thing to be known for, and it is a direct inheritance from the way the place was planned.Šport patril k Baťovmu systému od začiatku — športový areál vyrástol skoro, spolu so školou a kinom — a prežil firmu, ktorá ho zaplatila. Basketbalový klub založený vo Svite roku 1947 vyhral v sezóne 1961/62 československú ligu a odvtedy patrí k stáliciam slovenského basketbalu. Na mesto s pár tisíckami obyvateľov je to zvláštna vec, ktorou byť známy — a je to priamy odkaz toho, ako bolo mesto naplánované.
In 1951 the single Baťa operation was split in two: Chemosvit took the chemistry — fibres, and later the packaging films still made here — and Tatrasvit took the knitwear and hosiery. Between them they employed most of the town. On 30 May 1962 Svit was granted the status of a town. It went on growing outward in blocks of flats, but nobody demolished the 1930s core, which is the reason there is anything unusual to look at today.Roku 1951 sa jediný Baťov podnik rozdelil na dva: Chemosvit prevzal chémiu — vlákna a neskôr obalové fólie, ktoré sa tu vyrábajú dodnes — a Tatrasvit pletiarstvo a pančuchy. Spolu zamestnávali väčšinu mesta. 30. mája 1962 dostal Svit štatút mesta. Rástol ďalej panelovými domami, jadro z tridsiatych rokov však nik neasanoval — a práve preto je tu dnes na čo pozerať.
The Velvet Revolution of November 1989 reached Svit as it reached every factory town in the country, and the hard part came afterwards. Plants built to fill quotas inside a planned economy had to find customers who were free to say no; the eastern market they had supplied stopped existing, employment fell, and privatisation reorganised both companies. Chemosvit came through by concentrating on flexible packaging film, much of it for food, along with machine building and its own energy and service companies.Nežná revolúcia z novembra 1989 prišla do Svitu tak ako do každého fabrického mesta v krajine a ťažké prišlo až potom. Závody stavané na plnenie plánu si museli nájsť zákazníkov, ktorí môžu povedať nie; východný trh, ktorý zásobovali, prestal existovať, zamestnanosť klesla a privatizácia obe firmy prestavala. Chemosvit sa udržal tým, že sa sústredil na ohybné obalové fólie, veľkú časť z nich pre potraviny, a popri tom na strojárstvo a vlastné energetické a servisné spoločnosti.
Svit is now an industrial and commuter town of some seven thousand people, most of them working either at the plants on the original estate or a few kilometres down the road in Poprad. What makes it worth stopping for is that it is legible. An hour on foot takes in the brick terraces, the green strips, the boulevard and the works gate, and you can see exactly what a company in 1934 thought a good life for its workers looked like — including the parts of that idea we would argue with now. Behind the town the Mlynica valley opens straight into the High Tatras.Svit je dnes priemyselné mesto s asi sedemtisíc obyvateľmi, z ktorých väčšina pracuje buď v závodoch na pôvodnom areáli, alebo o pár kilometrov ďalej v Poprade. Za zastávku stojí preto, že sa dá prečítať. Hodina chôdze prejde tehlové radovky, zelené pásy, bulvár aj bránu závodu — a je presne vidieť, ako si firma roku 1934 predstavovala dobrý život svojich robotníkov, aj s tými časťami tej predstavy, s ktorými by sme sa dnes hádali. Za mestom sa otvára Mlynická dolina rovno do Vysokých Tatier.
Sources consulted while researching this page. Follow them to read further — and to check us.Zdroje, z ktorých sme pri príprave tejto stránky vychádzali. Kliknite a čítajte ďalej — aj si nás overte.
Sixteen videos for this chapter.Šestnásť videí k tejto kapitole.