I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was instructed in it both as a child and throughout my boyhood and youth. But when at the age of eighteen I left university in my second year, I no longer believed in any of the things I had been taught.
Judging from various memories, I had never believed very seriously but had merely trusted in what I was taught and in what was professed by my elders; but this trust was very unstable.
I remember when I was eleven years old a high school boy named Volodya, now long since dead, came to see us one Sunday and announced the latest discovery made at school. The discovery was that there is no God and that everything we were being taught was pure invention (this was in 1838). I remember my older brothers taking a great interest in this news and even allowing me to join in the discussion. We all, I remember, became very excited and took the news as something very enthralling and entirely possible.