Architecture of Consumption: Shopping Centres in Soviet Lithuania from the 1960s to 1980

Abstract

The construction of Soviet shopping centres that started in the 1960s marked a new stage in the consumption possibilities of Soviet society with the environments of consumption playing an important role. The main objective of this article is stated as follows: to analyse, following the LSSR (Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic) case, what the idea of Soviet shopping centres and its realization in the LSSR was and to ascertain how the Soviet authorities used the shopping centres for the development of consumption in Soviet society employing the advertising of shopping centres and the contraposition between socialism and capitalism. To achieve the research objective, the main method used was to analyse the published and unpublished sources that reflect the process of the appearance of Soviet shopping centres. The research demonstrates that the idea of Soviet shopping centres was not an original product of the Soviet system. Some aspects of their construction and composition were copied and there were attempts to implement them using Western practices.