Autobiographical book in which Tatiana Goricheva recounts how she discovered Christianity in Soviet Russia, despite persecution. In her youth, she was a Communist leader and a professor of philosophy. Her existential emptiness led her to seek happiness in all kinds of sources, largely hedonistic. Later, she searched for the meaning of her life in Eastern religions and yoga.
One day, while repeating the Lord’s Prayer like a mantra, in an automatic way, she felt transformed. She perceived that God exists and that she is loved by Him. The moment is harsh when, sought by the police, her parents disown her out of fear of the reprisals they might suffer. She knew that she had been baptized in her childhood but had no religious formation. She sought out a priest in an Orthodox church to confess; she did so and, from then on, began to frequent the sacraments.
The author states that the Russian population is hungry for God, not always in a conscious way. She praises the Orthodox Church, through the spiritual strength of its priests, and especially acknowledges the help received from monks living in monasteries located in countries annexed after the Second World War. Tatiana continues her activity through lectures, in defense of women, etc. In 1980, she had to leave her homeland to avoid being imprisoned or sent to a psychiatric institution. She lives through the years preceding what would become Perestroika.
Her arrival in the West caused her disappointment when she encountered priests who did not speak about God and people living in spiritual apathy. She dislikes both the lack of freedom from where she comes and the hedonism of the places she arrives at. At times, she contrasts the religiosity she saw in the few people she met in Russia with what she found lacking upon arriving in the West. More than an analysis of religiosity in different places, her personal testimony is valuable; she saw in Russia people who were seeking God and, in Austria and France, those who were turning away from Him.