This article examines the post-Soviet as a category of analysis in the study of historical memory and nation-building in the former Soviet Union. Post-soviet memory suggests a continuum in space and time that will be critically addressed through the lens of a local case study, the borderland city of Lviv. Two questions structure the analysis: how we shape our surroundings and how they shape us. Following postcolonial theories derived from urban and memory studies, Lviv is presented as a palimpsest made of temporal, spatial or even imaginary layers from which it could be possible to recount the multiple narrations at play in the historical memory of the city. Finally, the paper questions whether the category of cultural hybridity may be instrumental in conceptualizing the multilayered structure of identification processes in the post-Soviet space, moving beyond cultural and national essentialism.