Greatness of man

This article takes the form of an interview conducted by Olivier Clément with Vladimir Porech, a Soviet Orthodox Christian who endured six and a half years of captivity for his involvement in "free seminars" and the publication of a samizdat journal. Porech traces his journey of conversion, from family atheism to Orthodox Christianity, by way of his reading of Sartre, Dostoevsky, and Berdyaev. The central idea is that the Orthodox Church, marked by decades of repression, struggles to integrate the humanist values forged outside of it, even as Soviet society in the process of perestroika displays a growing religious thirst. The theological contribution of the interview lies in the thesis that humanist atheism constitutes a partial revelation about humanity that the Church must embrace and reground, rather than reject, in order to bear witness to the full greatness of the human person.