Posted on 02/02/2013 9:35:54 AM PST by marshmallow
In 1978, Soviet geologists prospecting in the wilds of Siberia discovered a family of six, lost in the taiga
Siberian summers do not last long. The snows linger into May, and the cold weather returns again during September, freezing the taiga into a still life awesome in its desolation: endless miles of straggly pine and birch forests scattered with sleeping bears and hungry wolves; steep-sided mountains; white-water rivers that pour in torrents through the valleys; a hundred thousand icy bogs. This forest is the last and greatest of Earth's wildernesses. It stretches from the furthest tip of Russia's arctic regions as far south as Mongolia, and east from the Urals to the Pacific: five million square miles of nothingness, with a population, outside a handful of towns, that amounts to only a few thousand people.
When the warm days do arrive, though, the taiga blooms, and for a few short months it can seem almost welcoming. It is then that man can see most clearly into this hidden world—not on land, for the taiga can swallow whole armies of explorers, but from the air. Siberia is the source of most of Russia's oil and mineral resources, and, over the years, even its most distant parts have been overflown by oil prospectors and surveyors on their way to backwoods camps where the work of extracting wealth is carried on.
Thus it was in the remote south of the forest in the summer of 1978. A helicopter sent to find a safe spot to land a party of geologists was skimming the treeline a hundred or so miles from the Mongolian border when it dropped into the thickly wooded valley of an unnamed tributary of the Abakan, a seething ribbon of water rushing through dangerous terrain. The valley walls were narrow, with sides.......
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
BTTT
The description sounds like Minneaposli this week. It’s like 2 right now. brrrr.
Incredible story.
Out of touch for 40 years?
Sounds like good Libs...they ‘find’ them every couple of years or so to vote and leave it at that.
Don’t worry for name of candidate. Just push D and go back to the ice.
The family’s principal entertainment, the Russian journalist Vasily Peskov noted, “was for everyone to recount their dreams.”
I remember reading a newspaper report of this back in 1978 or 79. I wondered what ever happened to them.
Not really. They were Old Believers, who have felt persecuted for centuries (and actually have been persecuted at various points), but who have developed a sort of separatist cult of their own. While they were undoubtedly under attack by the Marxists, these attacks go way back, and so does their attitude. There used to be several of these isolated communities in Canada and even one in Dakota, IIRC.
They’re sort of like the Orthodox version of Mennonites - but more so.
This is highly unusual, though, for one family to have gone off like that. Usually they went and settled in groups, for marriage purposes, if nothing else.
For all the preppers thinking a few boxes of dehydrated food, guns and ammo will save you while your neighbors starve, note in the article how merely fleeing into the woods wasn't enough for the Lykovs. They had to press deeper and deeper until they found a spot 6K feet up a mountain in Siberia (guess what winter lows are at 6K feet in Siberia?):
During the purges of the 1930s, with Christianity itself under assault, a Communist patrol had shot Lykov's brother on the outskirts of their village while Lykov knelt working beside him. He had responded by scooping up his family and bolting into forest.-snip-
That was in 1936, and there were only four Lykovs then—Karp; his wife, Akulina; a son named Savin, 9 years old, and Natalia, a daughter who was only 2. Taking their possessions and some seeds, they had retreated ever deeper into the taiga, building themselves a succession of crude dwelling places, until at last they had fetched up in this desolate spot.
All are dead except for one daughter. Two or three died within just a couple of years of being discovered.
Youtube has documentaries about the family and the surviving daughter who still lives out in the middle of nowhere: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3E8618B6685175C7
They also survived. How many others didn't?
Usually they went and settled in groups, for marriage purposes, if nothing else.
That appears to have happened initially but then came the Red Terror and everything went to hell.
From the article:
Under the Soviets, isolated Old Believer communities that had fled to Siberia to escape persecution began to retreat ever further from civilization.Once they fled into the wilderness of Siberia, they had to fear others hiding in the woods as well as periodic Communist sweeps through the woods searching for assorted holdouts, refugees and Gulag escapees.
№ 1. Weaving machine and hemp fibers.
№ 2. Agafia Karpovna responds to letters.
№ 3. Agafia Karpovna.
№ 4. The izba (log cabin).
№ 5. Yerofey Sazontievich.
№ 6. The vegetable garden.
№ 7. South-eastern part of the izba.
№ 8. Agafia Karpovna's goat
№ 9. Agafia Karpovna's dog, names Vityulka (little Victor)
№ 10. The Sayan range.
№ 11. Box made of tree bark.
That box made of tree bark is a work of art.
While many Russians were “banished” to Siberia by the sundry governments including the Tzars. Others went there to get away from the central control yoke of Moscow.
With the exception of Jews which under the comunists were considered a separate race many went there volutairily rather than emigrate to the US. It also explains why proportionate to its population there are more european emigrees per population from Germany,Ireland,and Poland etc during our immigration high mark in the 1870’s than from Russia..
Remarkable story.
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