Is The Sincere Now/New? Memory, Novelty, and Wear in Post-Soviet Rhetoric

This chapter consists of two parts. The first half of the text offers a short genealogy of post-Soviet sincerity rhetoric. That part of the chapter builds on my research for Sincerity after Communism: A Cultural History (Rutten 2017). For my thinking in that book, as well as in most of my early research, I am indebted at least in part to the addressee of this Festschrift. In the second half, I express my thanks to him by undertaking a more modest and more recent inquiry: a reflection on the nexus between thinking about sincerity and time. As I argue below, the passing of time matters to post-Soviet sincerity rhetoric on at least three levels: on the level of, first, memory; second, novelty; and, third, wear.