Though citizens of the former Soviet Union had long been guaranteed religious freedom under their Constitution, the reality was arrest or an abbreviated career for any who chose to ignore the unwritten rule that the only good Soviet was an atheistic Soviet.
With the death of Leonid Brezhnev, however, a new atmosphere of thought began to permeate Russian society, and by the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of perestroika or "restructuring" was already breaking ground in the areas of politics, society, and religion.
It was about this time that Christian Science began to resurface on the religious landscape in St. Petersburg —then Leningrad. Long considered the "window to the West," St. Petersburg became, yet again, a testing ground for individualists with enough moral courage to push the envelope of religious and social liberties. After decades of looking at religion as the "opiate of the masses," people again flocked to Russian Orthodox churches and even to foreign-sponsored evangelical rallies.
