Gorbachev Says He Was Baptized, Calls it Normal

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Wednesday that he had been baptized as a boy and considers that “quite normal.”

Gorbachev, 58, who has said before that his mother is a devout Christian, a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, was asked at a press conference here whether he, as a result, had been christened.

“Yes, I was baptized,” he replied. “I was christened, and I think this is quite normal.” He did not elaborate.

His wife, Raisa, said later that she, too, had been christened.

“We were born in the 1930s,” she said, “and baptism was normal in our families at that time.”

But their own children, a son and a daughter who are now in their mid-30s, were not christened, the Soviet First Lady added.

“They belong to a different era . . . ,” she said.

Raisa Gorbachev, a former instructor of Marxist-Leninist theory, has said before that she is a firm atheist but that she respects religious beliefs.