Gorbachev As A Lifelong Committed Rusian Orthodox member?

I suspect the USSR without Gorbachev as leader would inevitably have imploded anyway! Reagan was according to Wiki, intrigued by the possibilty that Gorby was a closet Christian from his summit talks with him. He was actually baptised as a Russian Orthodox church member as a child.
Mind you, given that he was born in 1931, being a committed Christian at that time may have another meaning ie to the Gulags or later to a mental institution! Another way Gorbachev's career may have not risen to the heights is if he became a law professor at Moscow State university, indeed many things could have curtailed it.
A friend of mine, an ex-Marxist says Gorbachev was the least successful political leader of his era because he ultimately destroyed the system he came from and presumably wanted to at some level maintain.
 
Lads and Ladies, I'm quite surprised this one hasn't got a reponse. I wonder could Gorby under such a dispensation have become a Russian Orthodox patriarch and eventually destroyed Russian Orthodoxism as a religeon unintentionally?
Or is he such an unsuccessful figure, OTL, that he's now largely forgotten.
 
I know very little about Gorbachev, but somehow it seems a tad more plausible to have him convert after his time in office. Didn't he ease restrictions on Orthodox Christians OTL?
 
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