I was indoctrinated to despise Christians. Then I became one

How did two children raised as atheist communists in 1960s America, become Christians – thousands of miles apart – and rekindle their friendship decades later? Sy Garte shares his remarkable storyry

If there was ever a truly committed child of the revolution, it was me.

My great-uncle fought in the Russian revolution, and one of my grandfathers, who founded the upholsterers’ union in Boston, USA, led a delegation of American workers to visit the Soviet Union in 1932.

He, alongside my other three grandparents, were all communists. And their children, my parents, joined the American Communist Party. By the time I was born, right after the second world war, they had left the Party but remained diehard Stalinists.