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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRussian family lived in wilderness for 40 years and missed World War II
A family of religious refugees lived in the Siberian wilderness for 40 years completely cut off from civilization. According to an article published Monday in Smithsonian magazine, when archeologists found the Lykov family, they were on the verge of starvation and had no knowledge of major events of the last half century, including World War II.
The steep mountains and thick forests of Siberia make up the forbidding terrain known as the taiga. It is one of the most isolated and deserted places left on the planet, with winters that stretch from September to May. Its five million square miles are largely uninhabited save by bears and wolves and the occasional lonely villages, which are home to only a few thousand people. These chilly, pine-forested wastes stretch from the furthest tip of Russias arctic regions as far south as Mongolia, and east from the Urals to the Pacific.
Siberia provides Russia with much of its oil and mineral resources, but the terrain is treacherous to navigate in summer and impassable in winter. In the summer of 1978, a team of Soviet surveyors were flying over a heavily wooded valley looking for a safe place to land a crew of geologists. The sides of the valley, which was formed by a tributary of the Abakan River, were nearly vertical and almost impossibly narrow, with rows of slender pine and birch trees that tossed and swung in the downdraft from the helicopter rotor.
The pilot was looking for a place to set down when he saw something he did not expect, a clearing with man-made rows for cultivation. Some 6,000 feet up the mountainside, someone had dug a large garden. The surveyors reported back to the four scientists who were running the exploration mission that they had found signs of human habitation. The scientists were initially alarmed.
Journalist Vasily Peskov wrote in his 1990 book Lost in the Taiga that in this part of Siberia, It is less dangerous to run across a wild animal than a stranger.
<snip>
The door of the cabin opened and a barefoot old man came out, straight out of a fairy tale, Pismenskaya described him as looking frightened and very attentive.
Greetings, grandfather, she said to him. Weve come for a visit.
Uncertainly, and seemingly with great reluctance, the old man said that since they had traveled so far, they might as well come in.
They found five people, the old man, Karp Lykov, 81, his sons, Savin, 54 and Dmitry, 38. Karps two daughters, Natalia and Agaifa, were 44 and 37. Karp and his wife Akulina had fled into the taiga with their family in 1936 to escape religious persecution. The Lykovs were members of a fundamentalist Russian Orthodox sect called the Old Believers, who had been subject to ridicule and harassment since the reign of Russias Peter the Great.
Living on potatoes, leaves and whatever animals Dmitry could hunt and kill, the family had survived in the wilderness, completely cut off from civilization. The two youngest, Dmitry and Agaifa, had never met anyone outside their own family.
More at: Raw Story (http://s.tt/1z647)
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Maybe an example for the future for us all.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)But, in all seriousness, I gotta give this family some serious props for being able to survive, alone, in Siberia.....for 40 years no less.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)the daughter don't go around whining about how much here mobile 'phone contract is costing for example.
btw - by deduction , using the daughter's age, this actually happened about 30 years ago.
adieu
(1,009 posts)according to the article.
kurtzapril4
(1,353 posts)do you?
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)This happened back in '78 from what I read.
bigwillq
(72,790 posts)They would NOT be welcomed here on DU!
BWAH!
babylonsister
(171,056 posts)Shōichi Yokoi
Shōichi Yokoi
Native name 横井 庄一
Born March 31, 1915
Saori, Aichi Prefecture, Japan
Died September 22, 1997 (aged 82)
Allegiance Japan Empire of Japan
Shōichi Yokoi (横井 庄一 Yokoi Shōichi?, March 31, 1915 September 22, 1997) was a Japanese sergeant in the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during the Second World War. He was among the last three Japanese holdouts to be found after the end of hostilities in 1945, discovered in the jungles of Guam in January 1972, almost 28 years after US forces had regained control of the island in 1944.
Hekate
(90,633 posts)At least he was not in danger of freezing to death -- but the mosquitoes must have been hell.
enough
(13,256 posts)snip from the article>
Famine was an ever-present danger in these circumstances, and in 1961 it snowed in June. The hard frost killed everything growing in their garden, and by spring the family had been reduced to eating shoes and bark. Akulina chose to see her children fed, and that year she died of starvation. The rest of the family were saved by what they regarded as a miracle: a single grain of rye sprouted in their pea patch. The Lykovs put up a fence around the shoot and guarded it zealously night and day to keep off mice and squirrels. At harvest time, the solitary spike yielded 18 grains, and from this they painstakingly rebuilt their rye crop.
snip>
joeunderdog
(2,563 posts)And an escalating erosion of values and civility, too.
derby378
(30,252 posts)It wasn't all bad, y'know.
joeunderdog
(2,563 posts)Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)Thanks for posting.
NutmegYankee
(16,199 posts)duffyduff
(3,251 posts)Let's just hope this isn't another Tasaday-like hoax.
DollarBillHines
(1,922 posts)north of the Circle in a Laplander family of nomadic reindeer herders.
Her family was totally unaware of WWII. They knew something was going on because of the presence of non-Sami people, but they had the ability to "disappear" when necessary.
Beacool
(30,247 posts)But what wonderful stories she must have told you.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)She's in her 70's...it's hard to imagine living your entire life in that kind of isolation.
adieu
(1,009 posts)twitter and facebook. She'll never be lonely. Oh, and internet porn.
Beacool
(30,247 posts)It must have been tough enough with her family around her, but alone???
Tough woman.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)I would love to hear more about this. It would be interesting to see them take a visit to "civilization" and see what they think of it. I am sure they would go running back as fast as possible.
ThoughtCriminal
(14,047 posts)A: He's dead.
Oh God, that means Marshal Beria is General Secretary! (Vanish for another 40 years)
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)It's worth reading.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)If they wanted to get away, they sure succeeded!
adieu
(1,009 posts)Eric Rudolph, I guess. Heheh.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Kurosawa film about exploring that neck of the woods and the remarkable guide they find. Based on a true story...
http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/880-dersu-uzala
Thanks for the heads-up on the Lykovs. Incredible people.
mountain grammy
(26,614 posts)whathehell
(29,065 posts)senseandsensibility
(16,989 posts)and is still there alone in her seventies? What a story. I won't go into detail, because I don't want to spoil it for those that haven't clicked on the link, but it's worth the read. Bookmarking.
busterbrown
(8,515 posts)Koch brothers will immediately fly survivors over to reap rewards and gifts and to keep the lune
fringe occupied with hope...
undeterred
(34,658 posts)Since they didn't get out to meet anyone else and all.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)tclambert
(11,085 posts)Frozen rivers make better roads than the muddy, rutted land based roads. Some historic tour guide told me that was the case in Michigan in the 1800s.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)What is this World War 2 of which you speak, stranger?
RZM
(8,556 posts)These were people who opposed the Russian Orthodox liturgical reforms way back in the 1660s. Many of them fled for the east, where they could live and worship more freely.
Interesting that hundreds of years later, this type of thing was still happening. Of course, believers of all stripes had problems in Soviet times.
senseandsensibility
(16,989 posts)This is one of the most interesting reads I've ever seen posted on DU.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Two grown sons with no women to have contact with, except their sisters.
If you've ever seen the movie, "The Savage is Loose," with Trish Van DeVere, you know what I mean.
Still, moving out there so long ago probably saved their lives.
distantearlywarning
(4,475 posts)One of the most interesting things I've read in a while