Family cut off from the world spent 33 years not knowing World War Two had ended

22 August 2023 , 14:42

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The Lykov family fled to the Siberian forests in 1936 and had no contact with the outside world for 40 years (Image: http://www.smithsonianmag.com)

The Taiga forest in Siberia is one of the last great wildernesses on earth. Thousands of miles of dense pine forest broken by jagged mountains, where winter snows persist from September through to May. The only inhabitants of these wild lands are usually bears and wolves prowling five million square miles of pristine nature.

So in 1978, when a team of Soviet geologists prospecting for minerals spotted what they thought were signs of human life from their helicopter, they were disbelieving. But as they circled back it became clear, here in a spot that had never been explored, next to a river with no name, 150 miles from the nearest human settlement, was a clearing in the forest with what looked like crops growing.

The four geologists landed and set up their basecamp about 10 miles from the little clearing they had spotted on the mountainside overlooking the river, and they made the trek to meet their new neighbours.

Agafya Lykova with her father (left) and a visitor in the mid 1980s (Vasily Peskov / Komsomolskaya Pravda)

Geologist Galina Pismenskaya recalled the moment she met the man who lived there: “He looked frightened and was very attentive. We had to say something, so I began: ‘Greetings, grandfather! We’ve come to visit!’ The old man did not reply immediately but finally we heard a soft, uncertain voice: ‘Well, since you have travelled this far, you might as well come in.’”

The man, it turned out, lived there with his family, five people in all, in a small, fire-blackened shed filled with birch-bark containers of cut-up, dried potatoes, the Daily Star reports. As the stunned scientists listened, the man revealed the amazing story of how they had come to end up in the middle of the wilderness. The father, Karp Lykov, spoke Russian and revealed he came from a sect of fundamentalist Russian Orthodox Christians called the Old Believers who had long been persecuted by the Tzar and then the Communists.

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One day in 1936 a Communist patrol had appeared in their remote village and shot Karp’s brother while the two had been working in the fields together. A terrified Karp had gathered his family and fled into the forest. The family, his wife, Akulina; a son named Savin, 9 years old, and daughter Natalia, 2, took some seeds and retreated ever deeper into the forest over the following years, until they ended up at the remote spot the geologists had spotted from the air. The two youngest children, Dmitry and Agafia, had been born in the wilderness in 1940 and 1943 and had never seen a human who was not a member of their family, and spoke in their own odd language.

Agafya Lykova as a young woman with her father Karp (Vasily Peskov / Komsomolskaya Pravda)

Their only reading matter was prayer books and an ancient family Bible. Akulina had used the gospels to teach her children to read and write, using sharpened birch sticks dipped into honeysuckle juice as pen and ink. The hardship of their lives was unimaginable, the family had made shoes from tree bark, patched their clothes with hemp cloth they had grown from seed and lived in a state of near-starvation. They had no idea World War 2 had happened or that man had landed on the moon, although Karp had guessed about satellites after seeing the "quickly moving stars".

When Dimitry reached manhood he would hunt for days at a time, barefoot in the Siberian winter. Without guns or bows he would simply chase his prey across the mountains until it died from exhaustion, before carrying the carcass home on his shoulders. Akulina had died of starvation in 1961 when a late snow killed all their crops. The rest of the family were saved after a single grain of Rye sprouted in their pea patch - they carefully guarded the plant until they could harvest 18 grains form it allowing them to slowly rebuild their crop.

Agafya Lykova in her 30s (Vasily Peskov / Komsomolskaya Pravda)

As the family came to know and trust the scientists at first the only gift they would accept was salt - Karp, then in his 80s, said living without it had been “true torture”. But their interactions with the modern world would have a tragic impact on the isolated family. In 1981 three of the four children died, two from kidney failure possibly due to their harsh diet, and Dimitry of pneumonia, which might have begun as an infection caught from the outsiders.

Neither Karp or daughter Agafia would leave their remote home, despite offers to reunite them with their old village, and Karp died there in 1988. Agafia stayed on alone, saying that the Lord would provide. Now in her seventies, Afagia still lives there, alone in the wilderness she has known her whole life.

Leigh Mcmanus