Russian literature might almost be described as the literature of conversion. (We noted some famous instances in Chapter 3.) Time and again, suffering leads to awareness of Truth or apprehension of God. Tolstoy’s autobiographical Confession recounts his own discovery of God. Prince Andrei in War and Peace and Karenin in Anna Karenina experience Christian love for an enemy, the only psychologically convincing descriptions of this kind of love in world literature. We also find conversions in “Master and Man,” “The Death of Ivan Ilych,”“God Sees the Truth,” and other Tolstoy stories. Several Chekhov tales— including his favorite, “The Student”—make spiritual transformation plausible. And in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita even Pontius Pilate becomes a believer. The extreme conditions of the Soviet period offered ample opportunity for the corn of wheat to die and, occasionally, bear fruit.
–Gary Saul Morson, Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions And Why Their Answers Matter
