The paper focuses on the memory conflicts surrounding Zmiyovskaya balka in Rostov-on-Don, which became the site of the most mass extermination of Jews on the territory of the RSFSR during the Nazi occupation. The local authorities resist attempts to designate Zmiyovskaya balka as a Holocaust memorial site. The reasons for this resistance lie in Soviet memory politics and contemporary historical policy. The Soviet narrative of the war, where Jews were not singled out as a separate category of victims or were portrayed as victims of lesser significance than Slavs, still influences the historical perceptions of citizens. Many are still unaware that the Nazis had a special policy towards Jews and are convinced that the invaders were exterminating all Soviet citizens on equal grounds. This influence of the Soviet narrative is fueled by modern memory politics. Although Russia, unlike the USSR, has long recognized the Holocaust, the idea of the exclusivity of the Soviet, Russian, or Slavic sacrifice in the WWII is as important to modern Russia as it was to the USSR. The status of the people that suffered the greatest losses in WWII is the symbolic capital that many Russians are used to consider their own. Therefore, the classical concept of the Holocaust, as an event unique not only in the history of WWII, but also in world history, hardly fits into the modern Russian narrative of the war. Attempts to designate the memorial on Zmiyovskaya balka as a Holocaust memorial are perceived by many officials and ordinary citizens as an attack on the status of the main victim of the war.

The article examines the social space of modern Kronstadt, a small historical town within the boundaries of St. Petersburg, whose residents still claim to preserve a special collective identity. The work is based on materials collected during interviews with locals in the spring of 2021. Kronstadt’s social space is characterized and described as an assemblage in which heterogeneous forces interact, thereby determining the prospects for the town’s development — both in terms of urban economy and the perception of the townspeople. There are four main elements of the current urban identity—or four components of the “Kronstadt palimpsest”: first, the townspeople’s perception of the town’s status and resource position within the hierarchy of St. Petersburg’s urban environment. Second, the determination of the administrative and “natural” boundaries of the town on the territory of Kotlin Island. Third, the ranking of neighborhoods based on the degree of prestige, along with the folklorization of “disadvantaged” zones. And fourth, the attitude toward the influx of tourists and the perception of “strangers” by local residents, as well as the division of city attractions into “ceremonial” and “personal” ones. It is concluded that the townspeople’s ongoing pursuit of the “right to the city”, based on the history, geographical location of the settlement, and their own ideas about the preferred urban way of life, largely determines the uniqueness of the Kronstadt assemblage. This sets this small town apart from the array of satellite towns around Russian megacities.

This article discusses a border town of Pechory in Pskov Oblast and its surroundings. During the fieldwork for the project “People’s History of Russia: Crossroads of Local Civilizations” local residents were interviewed about significant periods in the history of the city and the uniqueness of the area. The focus of the article is on how the residents comprehend the border as a phenomenon (in spatial, geopolitical, intergroup, and other senses) and conceptualize the frontier as a local specificity. The paper reviews the particularities of the aforementioned fieldwork, which took place in the autumn of 2020, the toponymy and microtoponymy of the town where three ethnic identities interact, the conceptual frameworks of the state border, city branding through food and architecture, and the coexistence of two main conceptual frameworks: the primary one, “for our own and for others”, and the hidden one, “mostly, for our own”.

One of the outcomes of urban space utilization is the emergence of local vernacu- lar narratives about it. Relying on such narratives, I examine the subjective perceptions of the residents of Tatarskaya Sloboda in Tomsk regarding the urban space where their daily lives unfold. The structure of the article is determined by overlaying the collected interviews on elements of the urban environment. Accompanied by research commentary, the article describes the residents’ perceptions of Tatarskaya Sloboda’s space characteristics, borders, as well as the streets and alleys used as pathways. The analysis of interviews and mental maps allows us to conclude that the primary source for constructing the vernacular image is not only associations and memories related to Tatarskaya Sloboda but also, to a significant extent, the presence of everyday practices associated with its space.

The article delves into material gathered as part of applied research for urban planning. The sample includes 7 small towns in the Leningrad region: border towns (Ivangorod and Svetogorsk), a satellite town of St. Petersburg (Kommunar of Gatchina district), and towns of Ladoga Lake and the river Svir’ (Novaya Ladoga, Volkhov, Syasstroy, and Podporozhye). Through necessarily brief fieldwork and specialized open-ended questions in questionnaires aimed at filling gaps in field data short due to lockdown 2020, the following aspects were identified: themes of local history present in the current discourse of residents, personalities known to the townsfolk, semantic clusters of local identity for internal use and for external representation, mental map of local objects important for representation of the town. The meta-analysis uncovered that for the examined towns, the preservation of specific historical narratives is tied to two main factors — the incorporation of these narratives into the core of urban identity and their manifestation in the physical environment (in objects and toponyms). Historical memory correlates with the length of time families have lived in the city: the later the last mass influx of new residents occurred, the less widespread and varied historical narratives are. The preservation of historical memory demonstrates an inverse correlation with the demographic prosperity of the city: population growth, in the cases examined, is only observable in satellite towns and only due to migration, which further “washes out” local narratives. The most common and important of the latest for the residents of these towns were stories about the Second World War; tales of the industrial glory of the early Soviet Union; lamentations over the “lost paradise” of the Soviet era and the “ruin” that followed it; residents’ reflection on the urban status of their settlement.

The article is based on the materials from the family archives of residents of the Luhansk region, digitized as part of the project “Donbas: Family Photo Archive” during the expeditions of 2018–2019. The material (both amateur photographs and studio shots) predominantly dates back to the 1960–80-s, a time of flourishing amateur photography, but chronologically it covers the entire 20th century, including pre-revolutionary photographs and also pictures from the 1990-s. The narrative composition of the photo archives is characterized; special attention is paid to the representation of family life chronicles and the preservation of memories of various significant events, such as weddings (civil registry office registration, newlyweds visiting memorials, wedding celebration participants dressing up, etc.), the birth of a child, the child’s life (in particular, starting school and graduation events), home celebrations of New Year’s Eve and family members’ birthdays, military service (in particular, taking the oath), participation in May Day and November 7th demonstrations, and finally, funerals. Besides, the archives contain photographs of family members, their friends, and relatives (such photographs were customarily given as mementos, as evidenced by inscriptions on the back): photography, in addition to capturing family scenes, had a communicative function. The author also describes a database created on the Daminion platform by himself, which provides the ability to tag uploaded media files and search by keywords. A list of keywords characterizing the subjects of the Donbas photo archive and the number of photographs tagged accordingly is provided.