The 5th Congress of Soviet Lithuanian Writers, which took place on 27-28 May 1970 in Vilnius, was a significant event among local writers, showing that ethnic values had become one of the main issues with local writers, but at the same time revealing that there were limits to Modernist expression. During the Congress, writers of the older generation, who dominated the Union of Writers, criticised their younger colleagues, calling their Modernist position Formalism. At the Congress, writers such as Eduardas Mieželaitis, Algirdas Pocius, Vytautas Bubnys and Algimantas Baltakis criticised authors such as Jonas Mikelinskas, Romualdas Lankauskas and Juozas Aputis, for disassociating themselves from tradition and everyday problems.
This document is important, because it reveals that the older generation had adapted to the stricter ideological policies of Brezhnevism, and disciplined their younger colleagues.