Was he? I’ve read several of Solzhenitsyn’s novels, so I couldn’t let this pass. In a 2003 interview he was asked, “In retrospect, what were the most important and defining moments in your life?” See: An Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Interestingly he never mention Christianity. I believe, he may have been Russian Orthodox; but where did you get the notion he’d been an atheist?
Many of the relevant quotes from Solzhenitsyn are more overtly theistic than Christian but Solzenhitsyn did affirm the Russian Orthodox Church at points in his later life. Solzhenitsyn had grown up in atheistic Russia. He conversion experience is associated with near-death experience at the Ekibastuz labor camp including conversation with one Kornfeld a convert from Judaism to Christianity who gave his testimony to Solzhenitsyn as his last words because he (Kornfeld) was subsequently beaten and wounded with fatal injuries later the same night after his conversation with Solzhenitsyn.
Quotes attributed in: Solzhenitsyn by Joseph Pearce (Kindle edition)
“I am deeply convinced that God participates in every life.” (Kindle Locations 1852-1853)
“I am deeply convinced that God is present both in the lives of every person and also in the lives of entire nations. (Kindle Locations 3364-3365)
Nations are the wealth of humanity, its generalized personalities. The least among them has its own special colours, and harbours within itself a special aspect of God’s design. (Kindle Locations 3369-3370) [from Nobel lecture]
When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar’s, demands still more insistently that we render unto him what is God’s—that is a sacrifice we dare not make! (Kindle Locations 3653-3655)
“Over half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God' (Kindle Locations 4251-5253). [From speech with title: Godlessness: The first step to the Gulag]
Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive. (Kindle locations 5119-5120)
The artist who believes in God, who has this awareness that there exists some superior force, such a person behaves himself naturally like God’s apprentice. (Kindle Locations 5474-5475)