The (Post-) Soviet Built Environment: Soviet–Western Relat ions in the In dustrialised Mass Housing and its Reflections in Soviet Lithuania

Abstract

This paper discusses the social, political and especially the technological aspect of the post-war Soviet industrialisation of housing, focusing on the relation to Western planning and technology. The chronological scope of the paper covers the thaw in Soviet architecture and construction that began in 1954 after the well-known meeting of Soviet architects and builders initiated by Nikita Khrushchev. This study presents Soviet architects’ study trips to the West, which became crucial in changing the entire urban planning and mass housing production system in the USSR. The text examines how pan-Union mass housing industrialisation policy and practice were carried out in the 1960s in the Western periphery of the USSR, namely Soviet Lithuania, which became the leader in mass housing urban design because of the Western-oriented ambitions of Baltic architects. Thus, in the paper the modern Soviet mass housing programme is researched from the perspective of (mutations in) modernist urban planning.