MY coverage of the presidential election campaign took me "last week into traditional communist territory, to a former collective farm. And there, among the wide flat fields of potatoes and grain, I witnessed a little Russian miracle.
Vladimir Averyaskin, chief, agronomist at the Industria Farm in Kolomna district, south east of Moscow, was giving me a guided tour. On paper, the farm is now a share company, called AO Industria, with the land divided up among the workers, but in practice little has changed since Soviet times as the shareholders still work to a common plan.
Dressed in a grey suit, Mr Averyaskin was droning on about the yield of the fields. My gaze wandered to the skyline. Suddenly I spotted an enormous church. Could we god and have a look at it? Mr Averyaskin was mildly surprised. "It used to be a store for fertilisers," he said, "but I think they have started to have services there now. We can go if you want." Soon we were bumping over the fields in his Niva (Russian Landrover) to the Church of the Holy Spirit in the village of Shkin.
Close up, the church turned out to be as vast and elegantly designed as a cathedral but it was in ruins. Once it must have dominated but now it haunted the little village with its wooden cottages and dogs sleeping in the sun.
On the steps of the church, a thin bearded figure in a black waistcoat introduced himself as Father Oleg, the new Orthodox priest at Shkin.
"Come in", he said kindly, and he gave us a guided tour of the graffiti covered shell whose only unspoilt feature was its fantastic acoustics. It had indeed been used to store fertilisers, a common fate for churches in rural areas in the era of state atheism brought in by Lenin and then enforced with particular brutality by Stalin.
Other churches were used as factories, even prisons. A church in Leningrad (now again called St Petersburg) was turned into the Museum of the Arctic and, where the altar should have been, there stood a huge stuffed polar bear. But since 1988, when the then Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, allowed celebrations to mark 1,000 years of Christianity in Russian, churches have been reverting to their proper use.
The church at Shkin was the creation of the 18th century architect, Matvey Kazakov, who built many of the classical palaces in St Petersburg. Why this obscure village should have such an architectural wonder was a mystery. But one thing was clear. Father Oleg faced a Herculean task in restoring it to its original beauty without any financial help from the cash strapped state. The Russian Orthodox church Patriarchy, which is pouring all its resources into the restoration of Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow, is in no position to help either. The country priest must rely on God and the generosity of the congregation.
The congregation at Shkin so far numbers 12 farm workers. They gather in a little side chapel which is being whitewashed and fitted out with a temporary iconostasis. Icons have been donated by especially devoted believers on the collective farm who hid them in their homes during the atheist era. One shows St Flora and St Lavra (Laurence), patron saints of agriculture.
Without any of the gold of more prosperous Russian orthodox churches, the church of the Holy Spirit seems to be filled with the spirit of early Christianity. Father Oleg, a young man just out of seminary, also seems more open, less authoritarian than orthodox priests one can meet.
To my clumsy question, "Is it difficult to attract collective farmers to church?" he answered elegantly: "The three most difficult things in life are to pay one's debts, to care for one parents and to pray to God.
The priest was hoping for an increased turn out for Troitsa (Trinity Sunday), one of the most popular church feasts in Russia, where pagan traditions have been absorbed into the national religion.
Throughout our visit, Mr Averyaskin's face was shining with interest at the explanations of the priest, who said he would be most welcome to come to a service and learn more about the religion of his forefathers. I am certain that the congregation at the Church of the Holy Spirit had grown to at least 13 last Sunday, with the addition of a communist educated agronomist searching for something deeper than quotas and yields.