Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

f, the family of |. T. Shlekht, and the family of Jakob G. dantsen. ABOVE: CCECB member M. I. Khorev (right) with youth evangelist Peter P. Peters (left) and Rostov children’s worker Nina Zakharova. Both men are currently in prison. BELOW: CCECB member N. G. Baturin with his wife on release from prison in October 1976. (Photo courtesy of Keston College) i ho received a two-year BELOW: The wife and children of Jakob P. Wolf (Issyk, Kazakhstan), w prison sentence in December 1977. (Both photos courtesy of Keston College) | | | ENA 317 N. G. Baturin with his family. Baturin, elected acting CCECB secretary in August 1979, was ar- rested in November 1979. (Photo courtesy of Keston College) 318 TOP: A group of friends wait in the left foreground for the release of Nina Kravchenko (September 1977) from the prison camp in the background. (Both photos courtesy of Keston College) BOTTOM: Released prisoner Nina Kravchenko shares a prayer of thanksgiving with her friends outside the prison gates. She had served four years because of her involvement in children’s work in her home congregation in Maikop (Krasnodarskii Krai). 319 : ORONO EERIE eA SHE GRAN SR OHO ij t 3 i i | i | 3 i Children and Youth 321 “Children are citizens of heaven, for whose life the parents are responsible. If a citizen of heaven perishes because the parents were at fault, the Lord will exact strict punishment, so much so that it would have been better: had he not been born.”2’ Recent research revealed that eighty percent of the believers gave religious instruction to their children at home.%8 In another study twenty-six percent of the Baptists interviewed had been religious since childhood, twenty-one percent described parental influence as the chief factor in shaping their religiosity. A study of Reform Baptists in Tambov Oblast revealed that forty percent of the membership was be twenty and forty years of age. This was also true of its leaders.3° Central leadership appeared to consist primarily of persons born before 1910 but 27.5 percent were under forty. At the local leadership level the involveme of the young peopl tween nt € was even more striking. In 1961, forty-eight percent of the local leaders were under forty years of age?! Soviet scholars also describe the Mennonites as unique in their special emphasis on the education of children. In Karaganda, Kazakhstan 81.5 percent of the children were taught religion in their homes and 46.3 percent of these were active believers.22 Only nine percent of the children had joined the Young Pioneer organization. Another study noted that ap- proximately twenty percent of Mennonite membership was under thirty years of age; in the city of Tomsk it was as high as forty-one percent. Generally speaking, more than half of the membership was under fifty, In the Pavlodar Oblast seventy-one percent were under fifty, in