From Difficult Heritage to Difficult Temporality: The Political Life of History in Cities With Scarce Heritage

Abstract

This article examines the challenges in self-narration faced by cities with short, sparse, and monotonous histories. Moving beyond the concept of “difficult heritage,” which focuses on problematic historical content (e.g., legacies of forced labor), the authors introduce “difficult temporality” to describe a structural scarcity of historical events. Through case studies of five Russian cities (Kovrov, Chernogorsk, Inta, Dudinka, and Susuman), the article identifies core and supplementary strategies these communities use to construct a usable past. The primary strategies, often state-supported, include the appropriation of nationally significant events and manipulation of the city timeline via prolongation or reduction. These approaches primarily address temporal scarcity while minimizing engagement with difficult heritage. Supplementary strategies, employed by non-state actors, involve an “embrace-it-all” approach to local events, a shift from history to ethnography/nature, and the corporate reinterpretation of the past. The research employs the method of temporal mapping to reconstruct local temporal landscapes. It concludes that the convergence of these diverse strategies, pursued by multiple actors with differing agendas, results in a multivocal, bricolaged temporal landscape.