The article examines how the evaluation of late-twentieth-century modernist urbanism formed during the Soviet period influenced the interpretation of this legacy after 1990. It raises the question of value transferability: which elements of Soviet-period narratives could be detached from ideological representation and actualised in the language of heritage protection, memory, and local identity in independent Lithuania. The Lazdynai (a neighbourhood in Vilnius City) narrative was based on professionally recognisable and universal arguments of urban composition, and could therefore be reinterpreted after 1990. Whereas, the meaning of Elektrėnai was more closely tied to the propagandistic narrative of industrialisation and the ‘city of light’; after this narrative collapsed, the city began to seek new anchors of identity. The article concludes that value transferability depends on the level at which a legacy can be detached from its original ideological representation: in the case of Lazdynai, it operates through the levels of urban composition, heritage recognition, local identity, and memory, whereas, in the case of Elektrėnai, value has to be newly recognised at a sociocultural level, incorporating layers of local memory.
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