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I think there is a good chance that this physician became Orthodox ( Russian) as this was the prevailing Christianity in the gulags. So I may be able to offer some insight on this...

You may or may not know that Russia as a country accepted (Orthodox) Christianity in 988 via a prince who traveled to Constantinople and attended our Byzantine liturgy there in the Hagia Sophia.

Up until just before the Bolsheviks took over, Russia was a profoundly Christian country. Empire perhaps.

Just before the revolution when it became the USSR, there was a movement in Russia against Christianity. It became known as the Russian Intelligentsia.

more here
EXCERPT - "The development of this situation helped explain why public life in nineteenth-century Russia was dominated, first by members of the gentry, and then by the intelligentsia that sprang from it. (Pares) The aristocratic and clerical origins of the intelligentsia left a decisive imprint upon its ideas --- and it was these ideas, rather than any precise occupational function, that served to distinguish the intelligentsia from other social groups. (Kemp) It comprised those who, having received a modern education, felt alienated from the existing political and social order. They might earn their living as professional men, zemstvo employees, or even civil servants and landowners; indeed, the figure of the "repentant nobleman" stands at the cradle of Russian intellectual history. (Pares) The ideologies propounded by the Russian intelligentsia tended to be socially radical, democratic, and cosmopolitan, although they might have a concealed elitist, authoritarian, or nationalist streak. (Presniakov) These theories, derived from the advanced thought of contemporary Europe, often bore little relevance to the immediate problems confronting Russian society, but this seldom detracted from their appeal. Intellectuals were acknowledged to be their mentors by nearly all educated Russians, that is, by everyone not closely identified with the autocratic regime. (Pares) Their leadership was in normal times implicit, but in periods of crisis (1877-81, 1902-7), it became overt and decisive. (Pares) Russian socialism was therefore a product of the intelligentsia.."

Many Russian theolgians and philosophers, of the Orthodox church, spoke out at the time, protesting the turning away of Russia from Christianity.

The results of this turning away from Christianity became evident shortly afterward, when Russia became the USSR.

Solzhenitzyn, and many other writers of that time period and later, have espoused the idea that Russia deserved the suffering under communism which came to it, because they as a country had turned away from God.

"(Solzhenitzyn) thought that millions of ordinary people in Russia, through deep and on-going suffering, had achieved a "spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive... After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits."Is Solzhenitzyn a prophet for our Times?

Solzhenitzyn believed and stated, and I cannot find the quote just now, that a country had a sense of itself, that a nation could be Godly or not. That each nation needed to develop itself as devoted to God as a population.

Because of this belief in countries as Godlike or not so, he could then propose that a country could be allowed to suffer as a country for turning away from God.
There are a few links about this which I will post shortly which you may find interesting, as it seems to be quite appropriate for us, now, here in the US, to consider. In my opinion, that is.

Good post, Mar. I, too, have long admired Solzhenitzyn and have read (a long time ago, now) a good deal of his material. I continually carry a newspaper clipping in my bible from the Jun 27, 1978 Cincinnati Enquirer. It is written by William Rusher and is entitled: "Solzhenitsyn: I have seen the future and it does not Work."

It's an awesome short piece based on an address at Harvard University when Solzhenitzyn was a 'celebrity.' Solz. wore out his welcome in that one visit to Harvard. It's getting ragged now, but its words still jump off the pages at me.

The West can survive only by reversing the process: "It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding....Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? The world is approaching a major turn in history, equal to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge...to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages but, even more important, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern Era."

Because of this belief in countries as Godlike or not so, he could then propose that a country could be allowed to suffer as a country for turning away from God.

I think we can make a case that God sometimes considers nations as a whole in judgement. But that is more typical of nations in the Old Testament. I tend to believe, and it is merely my own opinion, that under the New Covenant, God deals more with individuals and that there are essentially only two nations remaining in the world: the true Christian church (wherever its members may be) and all the rest of mankind. Of course, one could make the case that rich and free and powerful nations who choose evil may experience God's punishment or that He might withhold His protection from them. Many American Christians, for instance, have wondered if the 9/11 attack was a result of having tolerated abortion and riotous living for so many years. I'm still not convinced that God was punishing us in that way. I just don't feel that if God was punishing us for such grave sins that it would have been limited to a few thousand lives. I think that if God were punishing us, it would be much worse. Perhaps you can make a stronger case for Russia in turning to an antichristian system but the vast majority of the Russian people did not really make that choice. Much like in Nazi Germany, the horror was upon them before they knew it.

This story was rich and wonderful in its way. The doctor, whose parents were "cosmopolitan" Jews, a class of people who had been persecuted and were outside the 'pale' in Czarist Russia, looked at Christianity as their enemy. And so it was. When church and state march hand in hand, as did the Russian church and the czars, evil always happens. The same happened with the Roman church and empire, with the established church of England and with many other examples of state religions. The establishment of a state church has a very poor history, regardless of which religion is the state religion.

The Jews of Russia wrongly saw Christianity as their enemy. It was in fact those who represented the church and lead it who were most unchristian toward the Jews and they used the power of the state to persecute them. It is not rational to expect people to know the love of Christ because you are persecuting or punishing them. It never works.

One has to recall that Stalin even had a secular Jew, Molotov, as his foreign minister for a number of years. Russian Jews felt that there was a cause for hope. But this doctor and many other Jews found out that the new communist system was even worse than the old czarist system. And in the midst of the wreckage of his own life, the doctor saw the simple message of Christ, saw Christ as his only hope, found the freedom in Christ and the courage in Christ to lead a moral life in an utterly immoral situation. And as a result of his stand for the Christian faith, something he himself would never have expected, his story is known to us today in the person of Solzhenitzyn, the heir of his Christian belief. The doctor's work in saving Solzhenitzyn's life was no more important than the influence he had in his Christian testimony to the young Solzhenitzyn. In some sense, the doctor, in Christ, had a victory over Stalin. But the good doctor would already know this because he is likely, inasmuch as we know his spiritual state from Solzhenitzyn, to be in heaven and Stalin is almost certainly in hell. And Russia is free, more or less, of czars and commissars and state religions. There are many indications that Christian churches may prosper there.

It is, all in all, a very sweet story and well worth remembering.