In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described the moment he realized that he did not really believe what he had always professed. It happened during a conversation with another zek, or prisoner, named Boris Gammerov, a “yellowish youth, with a Jewish tenderness of face.” After exchanging biographies they passed to politics. Gammerov “began to question me” in a peculiarly intense way new to Solzhenitsyn, who had always lived in a world where educated people agreed on fundamental issues. Recalling “one of the prayers of the late President Roosevelt,” he “expressed what seemed to me a self-evident evaluation of it: ‘Well, that’s hypocrisy, of course.’ ” To Solzhenitsyn’s surprise, Gammerov furiously countered: “Why do you not admit the possibility that a political leader might sincerely believe in God?”
Solzhenitsyn could hardly believe that someone born and educated under Soviet rule could utter such words. He suddenly became aware that he was less than certain about what he had said — and about the system of thought that his remark presumed.