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The paper discusses the idea of ‘cultural resistance’ or ‘quiet modernism’ by analysing the records (in the form of interviews, papers and books) of the first generation of the post-WWII Lithuanian modernist architects (Vytautas Edmundas Čekanauskas, Vytautas Brėdikis, Algimantas and Vytautas Nasvytis, Algimantas Mačiulis, and Justinas Šeibokas), also known as the founders of the ‘Lithuanian school of modernism’. This generation of architects emerged in the late 1950s, when it started criticising the Stalinist architecture, realising important public objects in city centres, and occupying increasingly prominent positions in academia and the world of architecture, which eventually led to the formation of a particular cultural elite. This story of success might seem unrelated to the notion of ‘cultural resistance’ (or ‘quiet modernism’) often mentioned by the architects themselves. The paper concludes with the analysis of the evolution of and the ‘grand narrative’ behind this architect group that shared the same values and employed certain ‘quiet motifs’. The research also focuses on analysing how this myth has been reconstructed after the 1990. In conclusion, the paper argues that the notions of compromise, adaptation, and subversive opportunism—rather than ‘cultural resistance’—are more appropriate to describe the architectural and urban practices of the aforementioned generation of architects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secular Soviet state was well known for its elaborate 'socialist rites' instituted for life's milestones, from birth through marriage to death. Actions traditionally carried out in a sacral space were rather quickly assigned to 'consumer services', and were replaced by the civil registration of the newborn child, a secular wedding and funeral rites. Administrators of the new rituals insisted that these ceremonies were neither derived from religious rites nor were they intended to replace them. The challenge, therefore, was to create secular spaces with their own dramaturgy, designed to offer appropriate settings for weddings and funerals while avoiding any kind of religious presence. On a mass scale, most of the initiation rituals in the Soviet Union date only from the 1960s. This explains why special purpose-designed types of buildings only began to spread in many Soviet republics from the 1970s onwards. Soviet Lithuania in this context plays the role of an experimental place since the first purpose-built Wedding Palace in Vilnius (1968-1974, architect Gediminas Baravykas) and the Funeral Palace in Vilnius (1968-1975, architect Česlovas Mazūras) served as prototypes of functional type, modern aesthetics and symbols for the entire Soviet Union. The main idea of the paper is based on the fact that the new secular Soviet rituals were actually based on traditional rituals stripped of their religious content. It seems that tradition (in a very broad sense) influenced the new architectural spaces created to practice new secular socialist rituals. Therefore, from the social point of view these buildings are seen as substitutes for sacral spaces -a wedding palace substitutes for a church and a funeral palace is an interpretation of a cemetery chapel. From the architectural point of view they represent late Soviet mannerism in architecture as a certain simulacra filled with surplus meanings and decorations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at mono-industrial cities in the Baltic States during the Soviet era. In terms of economy, ethnicity and their urban appearance these heterotopic towns were outposts in the integration of the occupied European-like territories into the Soviet Union. Thanks to the principles of planning and state-favoured development that were applied across the Soviet Union, these towns, built for Russian speaking immigrants, stood out from the surrounding patterns of settlement that had developed naturally over time. The uranium producing town of Sillamae in Estonia was built in secret and with lightning speed amidst the panic concerning the atom bomb immediately after the war, and provides us with a perfect model of Stalinist urban development. Stucka, built in the 1960s near a hydro-electric power station in Latvia and Snieckus, built in the 1970s next to a nuclear power station in Lithuania, were less separated from the surrounding landscape, but both provide a perfect example of Soviet modernism, which had been learned from mass-housing in the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]