Communism was officially godless, but people don’t operate in blank spiritual mode, they were not created in that fashion. If it is not God filling them, then it is the devil. This fellow basically is a martyr....
By 1937 the historical Orthodox Church in Russia only existed in emigration, while Stalin created a collaborationist docile church that was allowed to operate in a few remaining church buildings and cater to mostly old women. That allowed the Soviets to say that there was freedom of religion in the USSR, — the point insisted upon by the Roosevelt administration as they propped Stalin’s regime with American industrial might.
This is, however, the reality.