Editor’s note: For those who are interested, here is my pre-Internet 1/23/1991 column about this book, when it was first published. This Scripps Howard News Service column was , of course, written shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union, which I covered in a series of columns linked to my two-week visit to Moscow, starting 10 days after the coup. For those columns, CLICK HERE.
The Soviet guide paused as she led a pack of tourists through the glory of Annunciation Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow.
This facility was built in the 15th century, she explained, about the same time as the Kremlin. Historically, this was the family church of the czars. As is the case with many classic Russian churches, it now is used as a museum.
“With glasnost,” the guide added, “many people think it would be great if these were practicing churches once again.”
American journalist Frye Gaillard couldn’t believe his ears. Here was a Soviet government employee advocating the resumption of sacred rites inside the Kremlin, a temple for atheism.
Gaillard recording the comment in the volumes of notes he took while researching his new novel, “The Secret Diary of Mikhail Gorbachev.” The tour guide’s remark became one of many real-life anecdotes in a book that blurs the line between fact and fiction.
Mixing journalism and fiction is nothing new. What makes Gaillard’s novel daring, to say the least, is that he probes the soul of a modern nation by invading the mind of its most public politician. The novel’s loaded question: Is the leader of the Soviet Union a “closet Christian”?
“I don’t think I knew enough to answer that question, as a reporter,” said the 44-year-old Gaillard, in an interview from his North Carolina home. “As a novelist, I can take what is a leap of faith. … Gorbachev has been quoted as saying that his wife is the atheist in their family. That does kind of imply that someone in their family isn’t an atheist, doesn’t it?”
Gaillard said he has discovered that many Soviet and American officials are, in private, asking similar questions about Gorbachev.
Some Reagan administration officials clearly believed that Gorbachev had, on occasion, hinted that he was a believer, said Gaillard. A few Russian Orthodox leaders were blunter. Several told Gaillard that Gorbachev is at least sympathetic to the views of his devout Russian Orthodox mother. He clearly believes that she and other Soviet Christians deserve respect. Gorbachev was baptized as a child, noted the Orthodox leaders.
And it’s possible to collect a few public quotations in which Gorbachev refers to “God” and “Jesus Christ,” rare words from a Soviet leader. Once example came in Armenia, when he denounced his political enemies by saying: “May God judge them. It is not for them to decide the destiny of this land.”
Another emotional image was made it into print. Gorbachev’s grandparents were reported to have hidden their holy icons behind portraits of Vladimir Lenin.
Gaillard weaves a few facts into a private tale — set in 1992 — that travels from the United States to Moscow and then back. Figures such as Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, Jr., find their way into the action.
In the book’s final pages, Gorbachev goes public with his faith, racing to escape an assassin who is acting in concert with angry members of the KGB. Earlier, the Soviet leader had recorded his private thoughts in a diary.
“Ours is a country with a Christian heart,” Gaillard has Gorbachev write, in one entry. “Do I still believe in Lenin and Marx? The former, maybe; the latter, no. But a new kind of certainty is emerging. I am beginning to understand the old Russian saying, ‘What good is a road that doesn’t lead to a church?”
Gaillard knows that this is wild speculation. “For one thing, Gorbachev has never said anything that, once and for all, would settle this issue. He’s had many opportunities to do so,” the reporter noted.
And now, a crisis in the Baltic states may prove that the Soviet leader is more than willing to crush dissent — even religious dissent — in order to keep his political power.
“This man is the product of a particular political system,” Gaillard admitted. “The best we can say is that he’s sending mixed signals, at the moment. … But in a way, that’s another sign of the remarkable changes he has unleashed in the Soviet Union. It’s amazing that Gorbachev is sending MIXED signals on the issue of his own religious faith.”
