The cultural and political value of sincerity in the literature of Soviet Lithuania
The cultural and political value of sincerity in the literature of Soviet Lithuania

Summary/Abstract: The concept of “sincerity” held different meanings across periods of the Soviet era, while retaining a shared political dimension. Lithuanian literature, as part of multinational Soviet literature, reflected broader Soviet developments but also displayed distinctive traits shaped by Lithuania’s later incorporation into the USSR, its interwar orientation toward Western culture, and the individual positions of writers. During the Stalinist period, sincerity functioned as a mechanism of ideological control: writers were expected to renounce their bourgeois past, declare loyalty to the regime, and repent previous “insincerity”. In the Thaw period, the imperative of sincerity in both Soviet and Lithuanian literature emerged as a reaction against Stalinist discourse, returning to personal experience and emphasizing lyricism in poetry and prose. In Lithuania, this tendency also meant a return to Romantic ideals, which paradoxically assumed the role of a cultural avantgarde. Yet the late Soviet cult of sincerity in Lithuanian literature also revealed dependence on the system, discouraging modernist and experimental forms that were often seen as alien to the national literary tradition.

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