Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2007

: Christlicher Missions-Verlag, 1999), p. 86. 36 ‘Is shizni pomestnykh tserkvei. Orenburgskaya i Kulbyshevskaya oblasti’ [From the Life of Local Churches. Orenburg and Kuibyshev regions] Bratskii Vestnik, 6 (1987), pp. 75-6. 37 Interview of P. Schulz with J. Dyck, 17 January 2003, Lage. Manuscript, J. Dyck’s personal archive. 38 W. Gutsche, Westliche Quellen des russischen Stundismus (Kassel: J.G. Oncken, 1956), p. 23. 39 G. Strieker, ‘Deutsches Kirchenwesen in der UdSSR nach 1941’, in Religionen in der UdSSR: unbekannte Vielfalt in Geschichte und Gegenwart , eds. O. Basse and id. (Zollikon: G2W, 1989), pp. 161 - 75, 161, 165. 40 G. Wolk, ‘Frommigkeit und gemeindliches Leben der Mennoniten in der Sowjetunion’, in 200 Jahre Mennoniten in Russland: Aufsatze zu ihrer Geschichte und Kultur, eds. G. and J. Hildebrandt (Bolanden- Weierhof: Verb des Mennonitischen Geschichtsvereins, 2000), pp. 227-41, 233. 41 Member List of the Evangelical Christian-Baptists Church in Karaganda. Papers of Johann Koop, in possession of his son J. Koop, Lemgo, Germany. Rebirth in the Valley of Shadow 45 participants of the revival were bom around 1930. Until 1941/1942 they were under the influence of their parents, particularly their mothers. Therefore, the most important aspect of the revival - a Christian upbringing - was carried out long before the actual event. 42 The next stage of the mission - to lead the children to conversion during dangerous times - was easier when the first part, primary socialisation in a Christian spirit, was successful. Not all mothers had the courage and time to give their children a Christian education during the years of collectivisation and severe persecutions. Reinhold Mantai’s mother was temporarily distanced from the Church and returned after her son had been converted. 43 Not all revival participants received a Christian education. The revival spread in a specific stratum of society which was guarded by a language barrier. Most of the work was done in German, a language the participants were accustomed to. The Russian religious language was unknown to them and they could not even pray in Russian. Another barrier was fear. People who were afraid of losing their status in an atheistic society avoided religious gatherings. The young deported Germans had nothing to lose and joined the gatherings, as Nikolaj Reimer, a preacher in northern Kazakhstan from the 1950s to 1970s, remembers. 44 Crystallisation Centres of the Revival The revival of Germans during and after World War II varied in intensity at different times. Just after the war, the opportunities were good. After 1948, and especially between 1950 and 1954, the pressure of sentences of up to twenty-five years in prison produced a drawback. 45 Not all locations of the revival were of equal importance. Some became, in time, centres of church life for Germans in the USSR. The deciding factors were a high concentration of depor