President Ronald Reagan was born on February 6, 1911. Celebrate his birthday all week with a sale on Ray Keating’s Reagan Country: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel. The price of a signed edition has been cut from $19.99 to $15.99, and the Kindle price has been reduced from $7.99 to $4.99.
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Reagan Country, Chapter 3
March 31, 1988: Moscow State University
The three students grew up together in the Soviet Union. Since they were six years old, they’d gone to the same schools, traveled in the same social circles, and were on the same career track to serve in foreign affairs.
As a result, Grigory Ivashkin, Vitaly Orlov and Maya Grachev were among the Moscow State University students, and members of the Young Communist League, selected to hear U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s address. They sat together in the large auditorium waiting for the event to begin.
Over the last few years, it was only in their most private moments – confident that they were free from the intrusive eyes and ears – that Grigory, Vitaly and Maya dared to share their ideas, beliefs, hopes and dreams. A trust developed, which was rare in a country where the young were taught to not only turn in friends and colleagues for opposing the state and the party, but their own family members as well.
In their conversations, Grigory usually defended the Soviet Union’s past for all that had been accomplished – from Lenin and Stalin to Andropov and Chernenko. But he was uncomfortable with Gorbachev, and his glasnost and perestroika, declaring that these were signs of weakness and a lack of principle.
Vitaly, however, found the changes being attempted by Gorbachev exciting, and the best path to actually strengthening the Communist Party at home and the Soviet Union in the world. He wanted to see communism spread further around the globe as a force for good, for raising up the people against the powerful.
The three accepted these kinds of disagreements as squabbles or differences of opinion among fellow travelers and friends. After all, they were party members in good standing, as were each one’s parents. It was only when Orlov admitted to his two friends that he was a believer, a Christian, that the trio’s relationship truly was put to the test. Over the decades, the Soviet Union relentlessly advanced a militant atheism, mounting assorted anti-religion campaigns that included closing churches, confiscating church property, harassing believers, and jailing, forcing out or shooting clergy. By the 1980s, of the churches that remained, clergy often were collaborators with the state, or even had KGB affiliations.
One sunny afternoon not long after they first arrived at the university, the three were lounging outside. Maya sat cross-legged on a bench, while the two young men sat in front of her on the grass. Grigory commented on a Pravda article noting the arrest of a Russian Orthodox priest for attacking the atheism of the Soviet Union. He said, “It is ridiculous that we allow these religions to persist. Christianity should be eliminated in this country, along with its forerunner, Judaism. We serve the state, which works for the greater good. Religion only undermines our efforts. It is troubling, and dangerous, that these superstitions persist.” He shook his head. “But as Marx wrote, ‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.’ I guess there always will be those who cling to such nonsense.”
This was not a new conversation for the three. But Grigory always led the way, with Maya chiming in here and there, and Vitaly waiting in silence to move on to another topic. But that was not the case this time. Vitaly simply declared, “I am a Christian.”
Grigory looked up, and said, “What?!” He dropped the newspaper and stood up. Grigory Ivashkin was a strong five-feet-ten-inches, with large hands, a ruddy face, a flat nose with wide nostrils, piercing blue eyes, and thin blond hair. When angry, as he was at that moment, his stare could intimidate many.
“You heard me.” Vitaly Orlov, however, had learned not to be intimidated, by Grigory or anyone else. He appeared rather relaxed and comfortable with who he was. He possessed an easygoing, likeable personality, and a quick smile and laugh. That combination seemed to match up with his appearance, that is, slightly overweight, shorter than Grigory, with round eyes, and curly light brown hair paired with a thick beard and mustache.
Both Grigory and Vitaly were intelligent. With a near-photographic memory, Grigory excelled at recalling facts and passages from books and speeches. But he was limited in his ability to see the full meaning, integration and consequences of ideas and trends. Vitaly had no such shortcomings.
“How could you…?” Grigory stopped there.
Maya Grachev sighed slightly, and then looked around. “Now, boys, are we going to argue over this? Grigory, what difference does it make if Vitaly is a Christian?”
To even the most casual observer, it was evident that if Maya viewed these two men as mere friends, the same could not be said of their views toward her. Both Grigory and Vitaly were attracted to her. She was thin, as tall as Grigory, and possessed fair skin, thick, dark brown hair, and large brown eyes. She also had a knack for making even the most mundane of Soviet attire look fashionable. At the same time, her eyes communicated a certain sadness, and she offered rare glimpses of a smile.
Maya often played moderator between the two men, who no doubt were willing to go along with her compromises in the hopes of having something much more than a platonic relationship.
Grigory said, “Of course, it matters.”
Vitaly added, “Yes, it does.”
The two men looked at each other.
Grigory asserted, “One cannot serve any god and the state.”
Vitaly retorted, “I disagree. My parents have done so. They practiced their faith, taught it to me, and no one can question what they have done for the party and for our nation.”
Maya looked at Grigory, and said, “See. It does not matter. Now, we have to get to class.”
As they packed up their books, Vitaly added, “The only complaint I have, the only complaint my parents have ever had, was being forced to be Christians in secret.”
It was three years later and the trio had never again mentioned that conversation, nor Vitaly’s faith. Now, they waited to hear what this American president had to say. Since each spoke English, they didn’t need to wait for the translation.
As Reagan began, Grigory leaned back in his seat. His body language oozed skepticism and even disgust. On his left, Maya sat up straight with her face expressionless. And to her left, Vitaly’s look signaled anticipation.
There were four moments during the speech that produced very different reactions from Grigory and Vitaly.
At one point, Reagan said:
Like a chrysalis, we're emerging from the economy of the Industrial Revolution – an economy confined to and limited by the Earth's physical resources – into, as one economist titled his book, The Economy in Mind, in which there are no bounds on human imagination and the freedom to create is the most precious natural resource. Think of that little computer chip. Its value isn't in the sand from which it is made but in the microscopic architecture designed into it by ingenious human minds. Or take the example of the satellite relaying this broadcast around the world, which replaces thousands of tons of copper mined from the Earth and molded into wire. In the new economy, human invention increasingly makes physical resources obsolete. We're breaking through the material conditions of existence to a world where man creates his own destiny. Even as we explore the most advanced reaches of science, we're returning to the age-old wisdom of our culture, a wisdom contained in the book of Genesis in the Bible: In the beginning was the spirit, and it was from this spirit that the material abundance of creation issued forth. But progress is not foreordained. The key is freedom – freedom of thought, freedom of information, freedom of communication.
Grigory shook his head. Vitaly’s eyes grew wider. Maya looked back and forth between the two.
Reagan continued just a bit later:
The explorers of the modern era are the entrepreneurs, men with vision, with the courage to take risks and faith enough to brave the unknown. These entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States. They are the prime movers of the technological revolution. In fact, one of the largest personal computer firms in the United States was started by two college students, no older than you, in the garage behind their home. Some people, even in my own country, look at the riot of experiment that is the free market and see only waste. What of all the entrepreneurs that fail? Well, many do, particularly the successful ones; often several times. And if you ask them the secret of their success, they'll tell you it's all that they learned in their struggles along the way; yes, it's what they learned from failing. Like an athlete in competition or a scholar in pursuit of the truth, experience is the greatest teacher. And that's why it's so hard for government planners, no matter how sophisticated, to ever substitute for millions of individuals working night and day to make their dreams come true.
Maya’s focus seemed to be off the speech altogether. Instead, she was taking note of her two friends. Grigory was gritting his teeth, while Vitaly smiled.
Reagan continued to speak of freedom in ways that the three had never experienced. He declared:
We Americans make no secret of our belief in freedom. In fact, it's something of a national pastime. Every four years the American people choose a new President, and 1988 is one of those years. At one point, there were 13 major candidates running in the two major parties, not to mention all the others, including the Socialist and Libertarian candidates – all trying to get my job. About 1,000 local television stations, 8,500 radio stations, and 1,700 daily newspapers – each one an independent, private enterprise, fiercely independent of the government – report on the candidates, grill them in interviews, and bring them together for debates. In the end, the people vote; they decide who will be the next president. But freedom doesn't begin or end with elections.
Go to any American town, to take just an example, and you'll see dozens of churches, representing many different beliefs – in many places, synagogues and mosques – and you'll see families of every conceivable nationality worshiping together. Go into any schoolroom, and there you will see children being taught the Declaration of Independence, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights – among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – that no government can justly deny; the guarantees in their Constitution for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Go into any courtroom, and there will preside an independent judge, beholden to no government power. There every defendant has the right to a trial by a jury of his peers, usually 12 men and women – common citizens; they are the ones, the only ones, who weigh the evidence and decide on guilt or innocence. In that court, the accused is innocent until proven guilty, and the word of a policeman or any official has no greater legal standing than the word of the accused.
Maya leaned to her right, as Grigory whispered, “Lies.” She sat back. To her left, Vitaly then leaned toward her, and he was barely audible in saying, “Fascinating. He’s not what I expected.”
Later, Reagan touched on faith:
Freedom, it has been said, makes people selfish and materialistic, but Americans are one of the most religious peoples on Earth. Because they know that liberty, just as life itself, is not earned but a gift from God, they seek to share that gift with the world. “Reason and experience,” said George Washington in his Farewell Address, “both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. And it is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” Democracy is less a system of government than it is a system to keep government limited, unintrusive; a system of constraints on power to keep politics and government secondary to the important things in life, the true sources of value found only in family and faith.
Grigory’s blue eyes narrowed, and stayed zeroed in on the U.S. president. As Maya watched his stare, her own eyes appeared a bit sadder than usual. She hung her head slightly, but then turned to see a combination of revelation and joy on Vitaly’s face. His eyes were wide open. She looked closer, and saw a small tear in the corner of Vitaly’s right eye. She faintly smiled, and then turned back to listen to the rest of Reagan’s speech.
A little more than 20 months later, the Berlin Wall came down, and by the end of 1991, the Soviet Union had disintegrated. Gorbachev, having lost control of glasnost and perestroika, resigned.
No matter their own desires, Grigory Ivashkin, Vitaly Orlov and Maya Grachev were forced to deal with a new world.
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