“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,” wrote Karl Marx, whose work inspired the Russian Revolution, “the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” In Russia, no force except perhaps nationalism was more powerful than religion, which made official communist preaching of atheism so foolish and counterproductive. During World War II, when Stalin needed to galvanize the Soviet peoples to fight Nazi Germany, he soft-pedaled atheism and, with drums and flourishes, returned the Russian Orthodox Church to its central role in the life of the Soviet people, a role that it has never lost since the war. (Up to that time, Stalin never spent a kopeck to rebuild mosques or resuscitate Islam, which he and other Russian leaders always distrusted.)
In October 1956 I paid a visit to Zagorsk, home of the famous Trinity Monastery. I saw the continuing power of the Orthodox Church in Russian life. On October 8, a special day of prayer in the Russian Orthodox Church, thousands of Russians young and old crowded into Zagorsk to celebrate the 650th anniversary of the death of St. Sergius. To gain admission to the Troitsky–Sergieva Lavra monastery, whose fourteenth-century walls were covered with golden icons honoring the revered saint, they had to wait for many hours, and they did so with remarkable patience. Once inside they were enveloped in both melodic prayer and incense wafting from colorful censers being swung by priests wearing gold and purple robes and dark stovepipe hats, called kamilavki. They sang a prayer known to anyone who has ever been in a Russian church, “Gospodi pomiluy,” “God have mercy,” repeatedly crossing themselves and listening to church bells ringing with enchanting regularity, like background music for their prayers. Hundreds of candles burned on small altars, and in a private chapel, opened specially for this occasion, was a delicately sculptured water fountain. A priest stood to one side, with one hand blessing the believers, the other dispensing holy water to many in the crowd appealing for help to cure incurable ailments. Some came with cups. Those so blessed with drops of holy water seemed rapturous, as though each drop was a personal gift from God.
Outside, large groups of schoolchildren in gray uniforms waited for their turn to enter the church. They talked among themselves. They, too, waited patiently. Even the weather was in a festive mood, the sun shining brightly on this scene of religious observance with an unusual warmth for early October.
Watching this impressive spectacle of religious devotion, evidence of a total failure of the state’s official policy of atheism, I recalled a scene at a Moscow church a few blocks from the Kremlin only a week before. It was not an unusual scene. A small group of young Russians was being baptized. Parents beamed with pride and pleasure. As a visiting American with more than a passing knowledge of Russian history I watched and observed, and asked myself: “Could this have been much different fifty years ago, one hundred years ago, even two hundred years ago?” I did not think so. There are certain constants in every society. Religion was a constant in Russian society.
I also recalled a conversation with Valya, a twenty-seven-year-old Russian who worked at a Western embassy in Moscow. She told me with a mix of pride and joy that for the first time in her adult life she had attended services at her neighborhood church the previous Sunday. She and her husband had never attended church services. “We saw no reason to,” she explained. “Our friends never did either.” But her four-year-old son, Volodya, once asked her a question she could not answer. He usually went to church with his grandmother, Valya’s mother, a very religious woman.
One Sunday Volodya returned from church services to find his mother sitting in the kitchen in her nightgown. “Momma,” he said, “why don’t you go to church? Everyone I know does. And Granny goes; so why don’t you and Poppa?” Valya felt she could not tell Volodya that she did not believe in God—that would have raised too many questions. So she promised that she would go to church with him and Granny the following Sunday.
On that day she got up early, dressed, and with her mother and son attended services at their neighborhood church. “And do you know what?” she said, a broad smile on her face. “I enjoyed every minute of it. It was like when I was young all over again. I liked it, and I am going to go again. All thanks to my little Volodyushka.” A moment later, she added as an unhappy footnote that her husband did not attend services, and would not. He remained the family’s atheist, arguing privately that it was better that way if he wanted to maintain his privileged position at his factory.
I met Katya at the Lenin Library during one of my many visits to do research on my favorite minister of education, Sergei Semyonovich Uvarov. She was not only the librarian but also the deputy director of the local chapter of Komsomol, the Soviet youth organization. She was tall and pleasant, with a warm, welcoming smile, and she invited me to a Komsomol ball, one of several sponsored by the library in anticipation of 1957 World Youth Festival in Moscow. I was surprised and delighted to accept. I arrived at the new wing of the Lenin Library at exactly the right time.
The entryway was crowded and festooned with balloons, and on the walls surrounding an enormous stairwell leading to the second floor hung the flags of the Soviet Union and the fifteen Soviet republics. Hundreds of young Russians ignored the flags as, looking forward to the dance, they hurried upstairs to the ballroom. The women wore very tight, transparent blouses, the rage in Moscow at the time, and the men wore the uniforms of neighborhood military academies. A four-piece band played American jazz, and many danced to the quick, exciting tunes. Those who for whatever reason did not dance stood, watched, and gossiped on the sidelines. It was not uncommon for women to dance together, but men never did. Katya had organized the dance and entertainment with Teutonic precision—she was a very impressive young lady—and everyone seemed to be having a delightful time, even though, in their conversations with me, they could not conceal a deep inferiority complex.
They kept asking me, “Do you like our ball?”
“Do you like the way we dance?”
“Do we dance as you do in America?”
“Is our clothing nicely tailored?”
“Is the band all right?”
“Does it play like your small bands?”
“Is the vocalist good, up to your standard?”
“Does he sing the Latin numbers as you do in America?”
And always: “Please be frank and tell us what you do and don’t like.” There was no reason to be defensive.
When it ended, Katya found me in the crush and politely escorted me to the exit. “Good night,” she said, shaking my hand vigorously, as though she had just completed a successful diplomatic mission. “I hope you had a good time.”
“Yes, indeed,” I replied, “and thank you so much.” If I entertained the thought, for just a moment, that this friendship might blossom into something more personal, Katya killed it by spinning around and vanishing into the crowd.
Nikolai Pogodin was a Soviet playwright of no particular distinction. His play Kremlyovskiye Kuranty—roughly, The Chimes of the Kremlin—was popular, in part because it was being performed by Moscow’s top theater, the Moscow Art Theater. The play was set in 1920, and the leading male character was Lenin, always courteous and compassionate, brilliant and kind.