More and more Russians are becoming atheists - why?
A picture taken in Moscow shows the Russian Russian Orthodox church of the Archangel dedicated to the Archangel Michael AFP Over the past four years the number of atheists in Russia has doubled. Here we examine who exactly are those Russians who have been turning away from the Orthodox Church, and whether the hemorrhaging of believers can be stopped. When I was a child, I used to wear a small cross, which I lost about five times, and at some point I decided that either God was turning away from me or he didn t exist. As a teenager, I came to the conclusion that it was simply a misunderstanding, and that there was no need to believe in anyone, and decided to stop believing in God, is how Daniil Istomin from Moscow, an 18-year-old college student and future primary school teacher, explains his drift to atheism.