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Baltic mikroraions and kolkhoz settlements within the Soviet architectural award system

The focus of this paper is how the Soviet architectural award system from the 1960s to the 1980s functioned in relation to the industrialisation of housing and planning for new types of residential units such as the mikroraion (large housing estate) in urban environments and kolkhoz (collective farm) settlements in rural areas. Despite the importance attached to mass housing declared by the Communist Party in 1955, the Soviet Union’s most prestigious state award, the Lenin Prize, was only ever conferred upon two model sites: the Lazdynai large housing estate in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1974, and the Juknaičiai soviet farm village in south-western Lithuania in 1988. The paper seeks to address several questions: What role did official awards play in the context of Soviet mass housing and new settlement planning ideology? How and why were certain (Baltic) sites selected and awarded? What aspects played a major role in both professional acknowledgment and the fulfilment of ideological requirements? The research is based on material held by the Russian State Archives for Literature and Arts in Moscow (RGALI), the Lithuanian National State Archives (LCVA), interviews with architects in Lithuania, and an overview of the contemporary Soviet press.