This Russian Family Lived Alone in the Siberian Wilderness for 40 Years, Unalerted of World War II or the Moon Landing

Siberian summers do not last extfinished. The snows linger into May, and the freezing weather returns aobtain during September, freezing the taiga into a still life awesome in its desolation: finishless miles of straggly pine and birch forests scattered with sleeping tolerates and hungry wolves; steep-sided mountains; white-water rivers that pour in torrents thraw the valleys; thousands of miles of icy bogs. This forest is one of the last and fantasticest of Earth’s savageernesses. It stretches from Russia’s Arctic regions to as far south as Mongolia, and east from the Urals to the Pacific: millions of square miles of sparsely popuprocrastinateedd noleangness.

When the toasty days do get to, though, the taiga blooms, and for a restricted uninalertigentinutive months it can seem almost welcoming. It is then that man can see most evidently into this secret world—not on land, for the taiga can swpermit whole armies of scrutinizers, but from the air. Siberia is the source of most of Russia’s oil and mineral resources, and, over the years, even its most far parts have been overflown by oil prospectors and surveyors on their way to backwoods camps where the toil of pull outing wealth is carried on.

Thus it was in the distant south of the forest in the summer of 1978. A helicchooseer sent to find a defended spot to land a party of geologists was skimming the tree line 100 or so miles from the Mongolian border when it dropped into the heavyly wooded valley of an unnamed tributary of the Abakan River, a seeleang ribbon of water rushing thraw hazardous terrain. The valley walls were lean, with sides that were shut to vertical in places, and the skinny pine and birch trees swaying in the rotors’ downproduce were so heavyly clustered that there was little chance of finding a spot to set the airproduce down.

However, peering intently thraw his prosperdscreen in search of a landing place, the pilot saw someleang that should not have been there. It was a evidenting on a mountainside, wedged between the pine and larch and scored with what seeed appreciate extfinished, gloomy furrows. The baffled helicchooseer crew made cut offal passes before unwillingly concluding that this was evidence of human habitation—a garden that, from the size and shape of the evidenting, must have been there for a extfinished time.

It was an astounding uncovery. The mountain was more than 150 miles from the proximateest endment in an area that had never been scrutinized. The Soviet authorities had no write downs of anyone living in the dicut offe.

The four scientists sent into the dicut offe to prospect for iron ore were tageder about the pilots’ sighting, and it perplexed and worried them. “In the taiga, it’s less hazardous to run apass a savage animal than a stranger,” as Russian journaenumerate Vasily Peskov wrote in Lost in the Taiga: One Russian Family’s 50-Year Struggle for Survival and Religious Freedom in the Siberian Wilderness. Rather than pause at their own momentary base, ten miles away, the scientists determined to spendigate. The group’s guideer, a geologist named Galina Pismenskaya, said they “chose a fine day and put gifts in our packs for our potential frifinishs”—though, fair to be certain, she recalled, “I did verify the pistol that hung at my side.”

As the intdisesteemfulrs scrambled up the mountain, heading for the spot pinpointed by their pilots, they began to come apass signs of human activity: a raw path, a staff, a log laid apass a stream and finpartner a petite shed filled with birch-bark compriseers of cut-up dried potatoes. Pismenskaya tageder Peskov:

Beside a stream there was a dwelling. Bincreateageened by time and rain, the hut was piled up on all sides with taiga rubbish—bark, poles, scheduleks. If it hadn’t been for a prosperdow the size of my backpack pocket, it would have been challenging to apshow that people inhabitd there. But they did, no doubt about it. … Our arrival had been seed, as we could see.

The low door creaked, and the figure of a very ageder man eunited into the airy of day, straight out of a fairy tale. Barefoot. Wearing a patched and repatched shirt made of sacking. He wore troparticipaters of the same material, also in patches, and had an uncombed tolerated. His hair was disheveled. He seeed frightened and was very attentive. … We had to say someleang, so I began: “Greetings, majesticoverweighther! We’ve come to visit.”

The ageder man did not answer instantly. … Finpartner, we heard a gentle, uncertain voice: “Well, since you have traveled this far, you might as well come in.”

The sight that greeted the geologists as they go ined the cabin was appreciate someleang from the Middle Ages. Jerry-built from wdisappreciatever materials came to hand, the dwelling was not much more than a burrow—“a low, soot-bincreateageened log kennel that was as freezing as a cellar,” with a floor consisting of potato peel and pine-nut shells, wrote Peskov. Looking around in the uninalertigent airy, the visitors saw that it consisted of a one room. It was crowded, musty and indescribably filthy, propped up by sagging joists—and, astonishingly, home to a family of five. As Pismenskaya tageder the author:

[The] silence was suddenly broken by sobs and feeblentations. Only then did we see the silhouettes of two women. One was in hysterics, praying: “This is for our sins, our sins.” The other, defending behind a post … sank enumeratelessly to the floor. The airy from the little prosperdow fell on her wide, terrified eyes, and we authenticized we had to get out of there as speedyly as possible.

Led by Pismenskaya, the scientists backed hurriedly out of the hut and retreated to a spot a restricted yards away, where they took out some provisions and began to eat. After about half an hour, the door of the cabin creaked uncover, and the ageder man and his two daughters eunited—no extfinisheder panicked and, though still clearly frightened, “frankly inquisitive.” Warily, the three strange figures approached and sat down with their visitors, declineing everyleang that they were proposeed—jam, tea, bread—with a muttered, “We are not permited that!” When Pismenskaya asked, “Have you ever eaten bread?” the ageder man answered: “I have. But they have not. They have never seen it.” At least he was inalertigible. The daughters spoke a language distorted by a lifetime of isolation. “When the sisters talked to each other, it sounded appreciate a enumerateless, blurred cooing.”

Slowly, over cut offal visits, the brimming story of the family eunited. The ageder man’s name was Karp Osipovich Lykov, and he was an Old Believer—a member of a fundamentaenumerate Russian Orthodox sect, worshiping in a style unalterd since the 17th century. Old Believers had been victimized since the days of Peter the Great, and Lykov talked about it as though it had happened only yesterday. For him, Peter was a personal opponent and “the Antichrist in human create”—a point he insisted had been amply showd by the czar’s campaign to up-to-dateize Russia by forcibly “[chopping] off the tolerateds of Christians.” These centuries-ageder hatreds were confprocrastinateedd with more recent grievances; Karp was prone to grumble in the same breath about a merchant who had declined to produce a gift of 26 poods of salt to the Old Believers sometime around 1900. As the geologists filled him in on what he’d leave outed, he participated a analogous lens to create opinions about current events:

The events that had excited the world were ununderstandn here. The Lykovs did not understand any honord names and had heard only uncltimely about the past war. When in recalling the “first world war” with Karp Osipovich the geologists joind him in conversation about the last one, he shook his head: “What is this, a second time, and always the Germans. A damn on Peter. He flirted with them. That is so.”

Things had only gotten worse for the Lykov family when the atheist Bolsheviks took power. Under the Soviets, isoprocrastinateedd Old Believer communities that had fled to Siberia to escape persecution began to retreat ever further from civilization. During the pinspires of the 1930s, with Christianity itself under attack, a Communist patrol had stoasty Lykov’s brother on the outskirts of their village while Lykov knelt toiling beside him. He had reacted by scooping up his family and bolting into the forest.

That was in 1936, and there were only four Lykovs then—Karp; his wife, Akulina; a son named Savin, who was around 9 years ageder; and Natalia, a daughter who was only 2. Taking their ownions and some seeds, they had retreated ever presentanter into the taiga, produceing themselves a succession of cdisesteemful dwelling places, until at last they had geted up in this desoprocrastinateed spot. Two more children had been born in the savage—Dmitry in 1940 and Agafia in 1944—and their understandledge of the outside world came enticount on from their parents’ stories. The family’s principal delightment, Peskov noticed, “was for everyone to recount their dreams.”

The Lykov children knovel there were places called cities where humans inhabitd crammed together in high produceings. They had heard there were countries other than Russia. But such concepts were no more than abstractions to them. Their only reading matter was prayer books and an outdated family Bible. Akulina had taught her children to read and author using acuteened birch sticks dipped into honeysuckle juice as pen and ink. When Agafia was procrastinateedr shown a video of a horse on the geologists’ television set, she determined it from her mother’s stories. “A steed!” she exclaimed. “Papa, a steed!”

But if the family’s isolation was challenging to understand, the unmitigated brutalness of their inhabits was not. Traveling to the Lykov homestead on foot was astonishingly arduous, as Peskov would procrastinateedr lobtain firsthand. On his first visit to the Lykovs in the 1980s, the authorr—who would assign himself the family’s chief chronicler—noticed that “we traversed 250 kilometers [155 miles] without seeing a one human dwelling!”

Isolation made survival in the savageerness shut to impossible. Depfinishent solely on their own resources, the Lykovs struggled to exalter the restricted leangs they had brawt into the taiga with them. They createed birch-bark galoshes in place of shoes. Clothes were patched and repatched until they fell apart, then exalterd with hemp cloth grown from seed.

The Lykovs had carried a cdisesteemful spinning wheel and, incredibly, the components of a loom into the taiga with them. A couple of kettles served them well for many years, but when rust finpartner overcame them, the only exalterments they could create came from birch bark. Since these could not be placed in a fire, it became far challenginger to cook. By the time the Lykovs were uncovered, their staple diet was potato patties uniteed with ground rye and hemp seeds.

In some esteems, Peskov wrote, the taiga did propose surplus: “Beside the dwelling ran a freezing, evident stream. Stands of larch, spruce, pine and birch produceed all that anyone could obtain. … Bilberries and raspberries were shut to hand, firewood as well, and pine nuts fell right on the roof.”

Yet the Lykovs inhabitd lastingly on the edge of famine. It was not until the procrastinateed 1950s, when Dmitry achieveed manhood, that they first trapped animals for their meat and skins. Lacking firearms or even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey apass the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion. Dmitry built up “astonishing finishurance” and could hunt exposedfoot in prosperter, sometimes returning to the hut after cut offal days with a youthful elk apass his shoulders. More frequently than not, though, there was no meat, and their diet gradupartner became more monotonous. Wild animals ruined their crop of carrots, and Agafia recalled the procrastinateed 1950s as “the hungry years”:

We ate the rowanberry leaf, roots, grass, mushrooms, potato tops and bark. We were hungry all the time. Every year we held a council to determine whether to eat everyleang up or depart some for seed.

Famine was an ever-contransient danger in these circumstances, and in 1960 it snowed in June. The challenging frost ended everyleang groprosperg in their garden, and by spring the family had been reduced to eating leather shoes, bark and straw. Akulina chose to see her children fed, and in February 1961 she died of starvation.

The rest of the family were saved by what they seeed as a extraordinary event: a one grain of rye sprouted in their pea patch. The Lykovs put up a fence around the shoot and defended it enthusiasticly night and day to defend off mice and squirrels. At harvest time, the solitary spike produceed 18 grains, and from this they painstakingly rebuilt their rye crop.

As the Soviet geologists got to understand the Lykov family, they authenticized that they had underapproximated their abilities and inalertigence. Old Karp was usupartner charmed by the procrastinateedst innovations that the scientists brawt up from their camp, and though he steadspeedyly declined to apshow that man had set foot on the moon, he altered quickly to the idea of saalertites. The Lykovs had seed them as timely as the 1950s, when “the stars began to go speedyly apass the sky,” and Karp himself imagined a theory to make clear this: “People have thought up someleang and are sfinishing out fires that are very appreciate stars.”

“What amazed him most of all,” Peskov write downed, “was a see-thcoarse cellophane package. ‘Lord, what have they thought up—it is glass, but it crumples!’” Even at the finish of his life, when he was in his 80s, Karp held gloomyly to his status as head of the family. His eldest child, Savin, dealt with this by casting himself as the family’s unbfinishing arbiter in matters of religion. “Savin was sturdy in his faith, but he was a brutal man,” his own overweighther said of him, and Karp seems to have worried about what would happen to his family after he died if Savin took administer. Certainly the eldest son would have greeted little resistance from Natalia, who always struggled to exalter her mother as cook, seamstress and nurse.

The two youthfuler children, on the other hand, were more uncover to alter and innovation. “Fanaticism was not terribly taged in Agafia,” Peskov wrote, and in time he came to authenticize that the youthfulest of the Lykovs “had a sense of humor and irony and knovel how to poke fun at herself.” Agafia’s atypical speech—she had a singsong voice and stretched straightforward words into polysyllables—guaranteed some of her visitors she was enumerateless-witted. On the contrary, she was tagedly acute, helping Savin with the difficult task, in a family that owned no calfinishars, of defending track of time. She thought noleang of challenging toil, either, excavating a novel cellar by hand procrastinateed in the drop and toiling on by moonairy when the sun had set. Asked by an astonished Peskov whether she was not frightened to be out alone in the savageerness after gloomy, she replied: “What is there to be afraid of?”

Of all the Lykovs, though, the geologists’ likeite was Dmitry, a consummate outdoorsman who knovel all of the taiga’s moods. He was the most inquisitive and perhaps the most forward-seeing member of the family. It was he who had built the family stove, and all the birch-bark buckets that they participated to store food. Perhaps it was no surpascfinish that he was also the most enraptured by the scientists’ technology. Once relations had betterd to the point that the Lykovs could be guaranteed to visit the Soviets’ camp, downstream, he spent many greeted hours in its little sawmill, marveling at how easily a circular saw and lathes could finish wood. “It’s not challenging to figure,” Peskov wrote. “The log that took Dmitry a day or two to schedulee was altered into handsome, even boards before his very eyes. Dmitry felt the boards with his palm and said: ‘Fine!’”

Karp Lykov fought a extfinished and losing battle with himself to defend all this up-to-dateity at bay. When they first got to understand the geologists, the family would hug only a one gift—salt. (Living without it for four decades, Karp said, had been “real torture.”) Over time, however, they began to obtain more. They received the aidance of their one-of-a-kind frifinish among the geologists—a driller named Yerofei Sedov, who spent much of his spare time helping them to schedulet and harvest crops. They eventupartner huged blankets, wool socks, grain and even a flashairy. Once, when Agafia was asked why she would participate a battery-powered flashairy when she wouldn’t hug suites, she “didn’t understand how to react,” wrote Peskov. “She only validateed that suites were indeed a sinful leang.” Meanwhile, the sin of television, which the family greeted at the geologists’ camp, “showd irresistible for them”:

On their unfrequent euniteances in camp, they would invariably sit down and watch. Karp Osipovich sat straightforwardly in front of the screen. Agafia watched, poking her head out from behind a door. She tried to pray away her transgression instantly—whispering, passing herself—and once aobtain stuck her head out. The ageder man prayed afterward, firmtoilingly and in one fell swoop.

Perhaps the uncontentdest aspect of the Lykovs’ strange story is the rapidity with which the family went into deteriorate after they re-set uped communicate with the outside world. In the drop of 1981, three of the four children complyed their mother to the grave. According to Peskov, their deaths were not, as some have specuprocrastinateedd, the result of expocertain to dismitigates to which they had no immunity. Both Savin and Natalia suffered from kidney fall shorture, most probable a result of their brutal diet. But Dmitry died of pneumonia, which might have befirearm as an infection he obtaind from his novel frifinishs.

His death shook the geologists, who tried hopelessly to save him. They proposeed to call in a helicchooseer and have him evacuated to a hospital. But Dmitry, in extremis, would leave neither his family nor the religion he had traind all his life. “We are not permited that,” he whispered fair before he died. “A man inhabits for howsoever extfinished God grants.”

When all three Lykovs had been buried, the geologists finisheavored to talk Karp and Agafia into leaving the forest and returning to be with relatives who had persistd the persecutions of the pinspire years, and who still inhabitd on in the same ageder villages. But neither of the survivors would hear of it.

Agafia did hug one invitation around this time. The Soviet rulement proposeed to obtain her on tour apass the country, and she consentd to go. Her overweighther stayed behind, but she spent a month on the road, soaking up everyleang she had leave outed. When the trip finished, she returned to her ageder life. “It’s terrifying out there,” Agafia tageder Vice in 2013. “You can’t breathe. There are cars everywhere. There is no spotless air. Each car that passes by departs so many toxins in the air. You have no other chooseion but to stay at home.”

Soon after Agafia’s sojourn, Karp Lykov died in his sleep on February 16, 1988, 27 years to the day after his wife, Akulina. Agafia buried him on the mountain slopes with the help of the geologists, then turned and headed back to her home. The Lord would provide, and she would stay, she said—as indeed she did. “The taiga reclaimed her,” author Isabel Colegate wrote in A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits, Solitaries and Reclparticipates. “She felt it was her home.”

More than 30 years procrastinateedr, this child of the taiga inhabits on in the savageerness. However, as her health has deteriorated—she turned 80 earlier this year—she has begined huging more help. Lately, much of that help comes from the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who paid for a novel wooden cottage to be built for her cut offal years ago. She also obtaind a saalertite telephone, which she participates daily, and volunteers frequently travel to her isoprocrastinateedd home to deinhabitr supplies and help her deal with daily affairs, particularly during the freezing prosperters.

Agafia will not depart. But we must depart her, seen thraw the eyes of Sedov on the day of her overweighther’s funeral:

I seeed back to wave to Agafia. She was standing by the river shatter appreciate a statue. She wasn’t crying. She nodded: “Go on, go on.” We went another kilometer and I seeed back. She was still standing there.