The author of this article, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was also an atheist as a young man. His experiences as an officer in the Red Army during World War II, his eight years in the Gulag, his bout with severe cancer during internal exile, his rise to fame during Khrushchev’s regime, his exile from the Soviet Union after receiving the Nobel Prize, and his triumphant return to Russia made him the literary giant of the 20th Century. His return to God was extraordinary.