"No Truer Truth" Sincerity Rhetoric in Soviet Russia

In contemporary discourse about human emotions, concerns about the sincerity of individuals, groups, and institutions thrive. This article thickens recent scholarship on sincerity rhetoric with an analysis of emotional regimes in Soviet Russia – a time and place where the notion of sincerity acquired a buzzword status that, in Russia, it pertains to this day. More specifically, I analyze the rhetoric of sincerity as employed in debates about Osip Mandel'stam's Ode to Stalin. These debates tell us that the practice that, in Soviet Russia, we call “staying true to oneself” operates in more layered ways than existing studies acknowledge.