Alexander 5 months ago
It’s not her, it’s us who should be pitied.
Allow me to “repost” another one here good article about the Old Believers:
OLD BELIEVERS (eyewitness account) 🍂
Last year, fate brought me to Lake Baikal from Buryatia. I am a hydrographer, and we worked on the Barguzin River. Almost untouched nature, cleanest air, good simple people– everything was delightful. But what struck me most of all were the “Semeyskie” settlements there. At first we couldn’t understand what it was. Then they explained to us that these were Old Believers. The Semeys live in separate villages and have very strict customs. Women to this day wear sundresses down to their toes, and men wear blouses. These are very calm and friendly people, but they behave in such a way that you won’t bother with them again. They won’t just chat, we’ve never seen anything like that. These are very hard-working people, they never sit idle.
At first it was kind of annoying, but then we got used to it. And later we noticed that they were all healthy and beautiful, even the old people. Our work took place right on the territory of their village, and in order to disturb the residents as little as possible, we were given one grandfather, Vasily Stepanovich, to help us. He helped us take measurements - it was very convenient for both us and the residents. Over the course of a month and a half of work, we became friends with him, and my grandfather told us a lot of interesting things, and showed us too. Of course, we also talked about health. Stepanich repeated more than once that ALL DISEASES CAN COME AWAY. One day I confronted him and demanded that he explain what he meant by this. And he answered this: “Let's take you five men. I can tell you what you think just by the smell of your socks!” We became interested, and then Stepanych simply stunned us.
He said that if a person’s feet smell strongly, then his strongest feeling is the desire to put off all things until later, to do them tomorrow or even later. He also said that men, especially modern men, are lazier than women, and therefore their feet smell stronger. And he added that there is no need to explain anything to him, but it is better to answer honestly for yourself whether this is true or not. This is how, it turns out, thoughts influence a person, and their legs too! My grandfather also said that if old people’s feet begin to smell, it means that a lot of garbage has accumulated in the body and they should fast or strictly fast for six months. We began to torture Stepanych, and how old was he? He kept denying it, and then he said: “That’s how much you give, that’s what it will be.” We started thinking and decided that he was 58-60 years old. Much later we learned that he was 118 years old and that it was for this reason that he was assigned to help us!
It turned out that all Old Believers are healthy people, they do not go to doctors and treat themselves. They know a special abdominal massage, and everyone does it to themselves. And if an illness develops, then the person, together with his loved ones, figures out what thought or what feeling, what action could have caused the illness. That is, he is trying to understand what is wrong in his life. Then he begins to fast, pray, and only then drinks herbs, infusions, and is treated with natural substances. Old Believers understand that all the causes of illness are in a person’s head. FOR THIS REASON, THEY REFUSE TO LISTEN TO THE RADIO OR WATCH TV, BELIEVING THAT SUCH DEVICES CLUT THE HEAD AND MAKE A PERSON A SLAVE: BECAUSE OF THESE DEVICES, A PERSON STOPS THINKING FOR HIMSELF. They consider their own life to be their greatest value.
The whole family way of life made me reconsider many of my views on life. They don’t ask anyone for anything, but live well, with abundance. Each person's face glows, expressing dignity, but not pride. These people do not offend or insult anyone, no one swears, they do not make fun of anyone, they do not gloat. Everything works, from small to large. Special respect for old people; young people will not contradict their elders. They especially value cleanliness, and cleanliness in everything, from clothes, home, to thoughts and feelings. If you saw these extraordinary clean houses with crisp curtains on the windows and valances on the beds! Everything is washed and scraped clean. All their animals are well-groomed. The clothes are beautiful, embroidered with different patterns, which are protection for people.
They simply don’t talk about cheating on a husband or wife, because it doesn’t exist and can’t exist. PEOPLE ARE DRIVEN BY THE MORAL LAW, WHICH IS NOT WRITTEN ANYWHERE, BUT EVERYONE REPORTS AND OBSERVES IT. And for observing this law they received health and longevity as a reward, and what a life! When I returned to the city, I remembered Stepanych very often. It was difficult for me to reconcile what he was saying and modern life with its computers, airplanes, telephones, satellites. On the one hand, technological progress is good, but on the other hand... WE HAVE REALLY LOST OURSELVES, WE UNDERSTAND OURSELVES BADLY, AND HAVE PASSED THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR LIVES ONTO PARENTS, DOCTORS, AND THE GOVERNMENT. MAYBE THIS IS WHY THERE ARE NO REALLY STRONG AND HEALTHY PEOPLE?
What if we really are dying out without understanding? We imagined that we had become smarter than everyone else, because our technology was incredibly diverse. But it turns out that because of technology we are losing ourselves. These Old Believers shocked me greatly. They wiped our noses with their strength, balance of character and gentleness, their health and hard work. Their ninety-year-olds look like ours at 50-60 years old. Aren't they good example how to live to be healthy and happy?
The famous hermit Agafya Karpovna Lykova, who lives on a farmstead in the upper reaches of the Erinat River in Western Siberia 300 km from civilization, born in 1945. On April 16 she celebrates her name day (her birthday is not known). Agafya is the only surviving representative of the Lykov family of Old Believers hermits. The family was discovered by geologists on June 15, 1978 in the upper reaches of the Abakan River (Khakassia).
The Lykov family of Old Believers lived in isolation since 1937. There were six people in the family: Karp Osipovich (b. 1899) with his wife Akulina Karpovna and their children: Savin (b. 1926), Natalia (b. 1936), Dimitry (b. 1940) and Agafya (b. 1945).
In 1923, the settlement of the Old Believers was destroyed and several families moved further into the mountains. Around 1937, Lykov, his wife and two children left the community, settled separately in a remote place, but lived openly. In the fall of 1945, a patrol came to their home looking for deserters, which alerted the Lykovs. The family moved to another place, living from that moment on secretly, in complete isolation from the world.
The Lykovs were engaged in farming, fishing and hunting. The fish was salted, stored for the winter, and caught at home fish fat. Having no contact with outside world, the family lived according to the laws of the Old Believers, the hermits tried to protect the family from influence external environment, especially in relation to faith. Thanks to their mother, the Lykov children were literate. Despite such a long isolation, the Lykovs did not lose track of time and performed home worship.
By the time geologists discovered there were five taiga inhabitants - the head of the family, Karp Osipovich, sons Savvin, Dimitry and daughters Natalya and Agafya (Akulina Karpovna died in 1961). Currently from that big family Only the youngest, Agafya, remained. In 1981, Savvin, Dimitry and Natalya died one after another, and in 1988 Karp Osipovich passed away.
Publications in central newspapers made the Lykov family widely known. Relatives showed up in the Kuzbass village of Kilinsk, inviting the Lykovs to move in with them, but they refused.
Since 1988, Agafya Lykova has lived alone in the Sayan taiga, on Erinata. Family life it didn't work out for her. She also did not succeed in joining a monastery - discrepancies in religious doctrine with the nuns were discovered. Several years ago, former geologist Erofey Sedov moved to these places and now, like a neighbor, helps the hermit with fishing and hunting. Lykova’s farm is small: goats, a dog, cats and chickens. Agafya Karpovna also keeps a vegetable garden in which she grows potatoes and cabbage.
Relatives living in Kilinsk have been calling Agafya to move in with them for many years. But Agafya, although she began to suffer from loneliness and strength began to leave her due to age and illness, does not want to leave the lease.
Several years ago, Lykova was taken by helicopter to receive treatment in the waters of the Goryachy Klyuch spring; she traveled along the railway to see distant relatives, even received treatment in the city hospital. She boldly uses measuring instruments hitherto unknown to her (thermometer, watch).
Every new day Agafya greets her with prayer and goes to bed with her every day.
He dedicated his book to the Lykov family. Taiga dead end» Vasily Peskov – journalist and writer
How did the Lykovs manage to live in complete isolation for almost 40 years?
The Lykovs' refuge is a canyon of the upper reaches of the Abakan River in the Sayan Mountains, next to Tuva. The place is inaccessible, wild - steep mountains, covered with forest, and between them there is a river. They hunted, fished, and collected mushrooms, berries and nuts in the taiga. They planted a garden in which they grew barley, wheat and vegetables. They were engaged in hemp spinning and weaving, providing themselves with clothing. The Lykovs' vegetable garden could become a role model for other modern farms. Located on the mountainside at an angle of 40-50 degrees, it went up 300 meters. Having divided the site into lower, middle and upper, the Lykovs placed crops taking into account their biological features. The fractional sowing allowed them to better preserve the harvest. There were absolutely no crop diseases. To maintain a high yield, potatoes were grown in one place for no more than three years. The Lykovs also established crop rotation. The seeds were prepared especially carefully. Three weeks before planting, potato tubers were laid in a thin layer indoors on stilts. A fire was made under the floor, heating up the boulders. And the stones, giving off heat, heated the seed material evenly and for a long time. The seeds were necessarily checked for germination. They were propagated in a special area. The timing of sowing was strictly approached, taking into account biological characteristics different cultures. The dates were selected optimal for the local climate. Despite the fact that the Lykovs planted the same variety of potatoes for fifty years, they did not degenerate. The content of starch and dry matter was significantly higher than that of most modern varieties. Neither the tubers nor the plants contained any viral or any other infection. Knowing nothing about nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the Lykovs nevertheless applied fertilizers according to advanced agronomic science: “all sorts of rubbish” from cones, grass and leaves, that is, composts rich in nitrogen, were used for hemp and all spring crops. Under turnips, beets, and potatoes, ash was added - a source of potassium necessary for root vegetables. Hard work, sound mind, knowledge of the taiga allowed the family to provide themselves with everything they needed. Moreover, it was food rich not only in proteins, but also in vitamins.
The cruel irony is that it was not the difficulties of taiga life, but the harsh climate, but contact with civilization that proved disastrous for the Lykovs. All of them, except Agafya Lykova, died shortly after the first contact with the geologists who found them, having become infected by aliens unknown to them before, infectious diseases. Strong and consistent in her convictions, Agafya, not wanting to “make peace,” still lives alone in her hut on the banks of a mountain tributary of the Erinat River. Agafya is happy with the gifts and products that hunters and geologists occasionally bring her, but she categorically refuses to accept products that have the “seal of the Antichrist” on them - a computer barcode. Several years ago, Agafya took monastic vows and became a nun.
It should be noted that the Lykovs’ case is not at all unique. This family became widely known to the outside world only because they themselves made contact with people, and, by chance, came to the attention of journalists from central Soviet newspapers. IN Siberian taiga there are secret monasteries, monasteries and secret places where people live who, due to their religious beliefs, have deliberately cut off all contact with the outside world. There are also a large number of remote villages and hamlets, whose residents keep such contacts to a minimum. The collapse of industrial civilization will not be the end of the world for these people.
It should be noted that the Lykovs belonged to the rather moderate Old Believer sense of the “chapels” and were not religious radicals, similar to the sense of the wandering runners, who made complete withdrawal from the world part of their religious doctrine. It’s just that solid Siberian men, even at the dawn of industrialization in Russia, understood where everything was heading and decided not to be slaughtered in the name of who knows whose interests. Let us remember that during that period, while the Lykovs were eking out a living from turnips to cedar cones, bloody waves of collectivization, mass repressions of the 30s, mobilization, war, occupation of part of the territory, restoration of the “national” economy, repressions of the 50s, etc. took place in Russia. the so-called consolidation of collective farms (read - the destruction of small remote villages - of course! After all, everyone should live under the supervision of the authorities). According to some estimates, during this period the population of Russia decreased by 35 - 40%! The Lykovs also did not do without losses, but they lived freely, with dignity, masters of themselves, on a section of taiga measuring 15 square kilometers. This was their World, their Earth, which gave them everything they needed.
In recent years, we have been talking a lot about a possible meeting with inhabitants of other worlds - representatives of alien civilizations that are reaching out to us from Space.
What not about we're talking about. How to negotiate with them? Will our immunity work against unknown diseases? Will diverse cultures converge or collide?
And very close - literally before our eyes - is a living example of such a meeting.
We are talking about the dramatic fate of the Lykov family, who lived for almost 40 years in the Altai taiga in complete isolation - in their own world. Our civilization of the 20th century collapsed on the primitive reality of taiga hermits. And what? We did not accept their spiritual world. We did not protect them from our diseases. We failed to understand their life principles. And we destroyed their already established civilization, which we did not understand and did not accept.
The first reports of the discovery of a family in an inaccessible region of the Western Sayan Mountains, which had lived without any connection with the outside world for more than forty years, appeared in print in 1980, first in the first newspaper “Socialist Industry”, then in “Krasnoyarsky Rabochiy”. And then in 1982 she published a series of articles about this family “ TVNZ" They wrote that the family consisted of five people: father - Karp Iosifovich, his two sons - Dmitry and Savvin and two daughters - Natalya and Agafya. Their last name is Lykov.
They wrote that in the thirties they voluntarily left the world on the basis of religious fanaticism. They wrote a lot about them, but with a precisely measured portion of sympathy. “Measured” because even then those who took this story to heart were struck by the arrogant, civilized and condescending attitude of Soviet journalism, which dubbed amazing life Russian family in forest solitude "taiga dead end". Expressing approval of Lykov in particular, Soviet journalists assessed the entire life of the family categorically and unambiguously:
- “life and everyday life are wretched to the extreme, a story about present life and about major events they listened in it like Martians”;
- “the sense of beauty was killed in this wretched life, by nature given to a person. Not a flower in the hut, no decoration in it. No attempt to decorate clothes, things... The Lykovs didn’t know songs”;
- “the younger Lykovs did not have the precious opportunity for humans to communicate with their own kind, did not know love, and could not continue their family line. The culprit is a fanatical dark belief in a force that lies beyond the boundaries of existence, called God. Religion was undoubtedly a support in this suffering life. But she was also the cause of the terrible deadlock.”
Despite the desire to “cause sympathy” that was not stated in these publications, the Soviet press, assessing the life of the Lykovs as a whole, called it “a complete mistake,” “almost a fossil case in human existence" As if forgetting that we are still talking about people, Soviet journalists declared the discovery of the Lykov family “the discovery of a living mammoth,” as if hinting that over the years of forest life the Lykovs had fallen so far behind our correct and advanced life that they cannot be considered to civilization in general.
True, even then the attentive reader noticed the discrepancy between the accusatory assessments and the facts cited by the same journalists. They wrote about the “darkness” of the Lykovs’ life, and while they were counting the days, throughout their hermit life they never made a mistake in the calendar; Karp Iosifovich’s wife taught all the children to read and write from the Psalter, which, like other religious books, was carefully preserved in the family; Savvin even knew Holy Bible by heart; and after the launch of the first Earth satellite in 1957, Karp Iosifovich noted: “The stars soon began to walk across the sky.”
Journalists wrote about the Lykovs as fanatics of the faith - and it was not only not customary for the Lykovs to teach others, but even to speak badly about them. (Let us note in parentheses that some of Agafya’s words, to give greater persuasiveness to some journalistic arguments, were invented by the journalists themselves.)
To be fair, it must be said: not everyone shared this given point from the perspective of the party press. There were also those who wrote about the Lykovs differently - with respect for their spiritual strength, for their life feat. They wrote, but very little, because the newspapers did not provide an opportunity to defend the name and honor of the Russian Lykov family from accusations of darkness, ignorance, and fanaticism.
One of these people was the writer Lev Stepanovich Cherepanov, who visited the Lykovs a month after the first report about them. Doctors were with him medical sciences, Head of the Department of Anesthesiology of the Krasnoyarsk Institute for Advanced Medical Studies, Professor I. P. Nazarov and Head Physician of the 20th Hospital of Krasnoyarsk V. Golovin. Even then, in October 1980, Cherepanov asked the regional leadership to introduce a complete ban on visits to the Lykovs by random people, suggesting, based on familiarity with the medical literature, that such visits could threaten the life of the Lykovs. And the Lykovs appeared before Lev Cherepanov as completely different people than from the pages of the party press.
People who have met the Lykovs since 1978, says Cherepanov, judged them by their clothes. When they saw that the Lykovs had everything homespun, that their hats were made from musk deer fur, and that their means of struggling for existence were primitive, they hastily concluded that the hermits were far behind us. That is, they began to judge the Lykovs downwards, as people of a lower class compared to themselves. But then it turned out how disgusting they are if they look at us as weak people who need to be looked after. After all, “save” literally means “help.” I then asked Professor Nazarov: “Igor Pavlovich, maybe you are happier than me and have seen this in our lives? When would you come to your boss, and he, leaving the table and shaking your hand, asks how I can be useful to you?
He laughed and said that in our country such a question would be interpreted incorrectly, that is, there would be a suspicion that they wanted to accommodate someone halfway out of some self-interest, and our behavior would be perceived as ingratiating.
From that moment it became clear that we turned out to be people who think differently than the Lykovs. Naturally, it was worth wondering who else they greet like that - with a friendly disposition? It turned out - everyone! Here R. Rozhdestvensky wrote the song “Where the Motherland Begins.” From this, that, the third... - remember her words. But for the Lykovs, the Motherland begins with one’s neighbor. A man came - and the Motherland begins with him. Not from the ABC book, not from the street, not from the house - but from the one who came. Once he came, it means he turned out to be a neighbor. And how can one not render him a feasible service?
This is what immediately divided us. And we understood: yes, indeed, the Lykovs have a semi-natural or even subsistence economy, but their moral potential turned out to be, or rather remained, very high. We lost it. According to the Lykovs, you can see with your own eyes what side results we acquired in the struggle for technical achievements after 1917. After all, the most important thing for us is the highest labor productivity. So we drove productivity. And while taking care of the body, it would be necessary not to forget about the spirit, because the spirit and the body, despite their opposition, must exist in unity. And when the balance between them is disturbed, then an inferior person appears.
Yes, we were better equipped, we had boots with thick soles, sleeping bags, shirts that were not torn by branches, trousers no worse than these shirts, stewed meat, condensed milk, lard - whatever you wanted. But it turned out that the Lykovs were morally superior to us, and this immediately predetermined the entire relationship with the Lykovs. This watershed has passed, regardless of whether we wanted to reckon with it or not.
We were not the first to come to the Lykovs. Many people have met with them since 1978, and when Karp Iosifovich determined by some gestures that I was the eldest in the group of “lay people,” he called me aside and asked: “Would you like to take it as yours, as they say there?” , wife, fur on the collar?” Of course, I immediately objected, which greatly surprised Karp Iosifovich, because he was used to people taking his furs. I told Professor Nazarov about this incident. He, naturally, replied that this should not happen in our relationship. From that moment on, we began to separate ourselves from other visitors. If we came and did something, it was only “for the sake of it.” We didn’t take anything from the Lykovs, and the Lykovs didn’t know how to treat us. Who are we?
Has civilization already shown itself to them differently?
Yes, and it seems like we are from the same civilization, but we don’t smoke or drink. And in addition, we don’t take sables. And then we worked hard, helping the Lykovs with the housework: sawing stumps down to the ground, chopping firewood, reroofing the house where Savvin and Dmitry lived. And we thought we were doing a very good job. But still, after some time, on our other visit, Agafya, not seeing that I was passing nearby, said to my father: “But the brothers worked better.” My friends were surprised: “How can it be, we were sweating ourselves.” And then we realized: we had forgotten how to work. After the Lykovs came to this conclusion, they already treated us condescendingly.
With the Lykovs, we saw with our own eyes that family is an anvil, and work is not just work “from” to “to”. Their work is a concern. About whom? About your neighbor. A brother's neighbor is a brother, sisters. And so on.
Then, the Lykovs had a piece of land, hence their independence. They met us without fawning or turning up their noses - as equals. Because they didn't have to gain anyone's favor, recognition or praise. Everything they needed, they could take from their piece of land, or from the taiga, or from the river. Many of the tools were made by them themselves. Even if they did not meet any modern aesthetic requirements, they were quite suitable for this or that job.
This is where the difference between the Lykovs and us began to appear. The Lykovs can be imagined as people from 1917, that is, from the pre-revolutionary era. You won’t see people like that anymore - we’ve all leveled out. And the difference between us, representatives of the modern civilization and the pre-revolutionary Lykov civilization, one way or another had to come out, one way or another characterizing both the Lykovs and us. I do not blame the journalists - Yuri Sventitsky, Nikolai Zhuravlev, Vasily Peskov, because, you see, they did not try to tell about the Lykovs truthfully and without bias. Since they considered the Lykovs to be victims of themselves, victims of faith, then these journalists themselves should be recognized as victims of our 70 years. This was our moral: everything that benefits the revolution is right. We didn’t even think about the individual; we were used to judging everyone from class positions. And Yuri Sventitsky immediately “saw through” the Lykovs. He called Karp Iosifovich a deserter, called him a parasite, but there was no evidence. Well, the reader knew nothing about desertion, but what about “parasitism”? How could the Lykovs parasitize away from people, how could they profit at someone else’s expense?
For them it was simply impossible. Nevertheless, no one protested the speech of Yu. Sventitsky in “Socialist Industry” or the speech of N. Zhuravlev in “Krasnoyarsk Worker”. Mostly pensioners responded to my rare articles - they expressed sympathy and did not reason at all. I notice that the reader has completely forgotten how or does not want to reason and think for himself - he only loves everything ready-made.
Lev Stepanovich, so what do we now know for certain about the Lykovs? After all, publications about them were guilty not only of inaccuracies, but also of distortions.
Let's take a piece of their life in Tishi, on the Bolshoi Abakan River, before collectivization. In the 20s, it was a settlement “in one estate”, where the Lykov family lived. When the CHON detachments appeared, the peasants began to worry, and they began to move to the Lykovs. From the Lykovsky repair a small village of 10-12 courtyards grew. Those who moved in with the Lykovs, naturally, told what was happening in the world; they were all looking for salvation from the new government. In 1929, a certain Konstantin Kukolnikov appeared in the Lykovo village with instructions to create an artel that was supposed to engage in fishing and hunting.
In the same year, the Lykovs, not wanting to be enrolled in the artel, since they were accustomed to an independent life and had heard enough about what was in store for them, got together and left all together: three brothers - Stepan, Karp Iosifovich and Evdokim, their father, mother and the one who performed service with them, as well as close relatives. Karp Iosifovich was then 28 years old, he was not married. By the way, he never led the community, as they wrote about it, and the Lykovs never belonged to the sect of “runners.” All the Lykovs migrated along the Bolshoi Abakan River and found shelter there. They did not live secretly, but appeared in Tishi to buy threads for knitting nets; together with the Tishin people they set up a hospital on Goryachiy Klyuch. And only a year later Karp Iosifovich went to Altai and brought his wife Akulina Karpovna. And there, in the taiga, one might say, in the Lykovsky upper reaches of the Big Abakan, their children were born.
In 1932 it was formed Altai Nature Reserve, the border of which covered not only Altai, but also part Krasnoyarsk Territory. The Lykovs who settled there ended up in this part. They were presented with demands: they were not allowed to shoot, fish or plow the land. They had to get out of there. In 1935, the Lykovs went to Altai to visit their relatives and lived first on the Tropins’ “vater”, and then in a dugout. Karp Iosifovich visited the Prilavok, which is near the mouth of Soksu. There, in his garden, under Karp Iosifovich, Evdokim was shot by huntsmen. Then the Lykovs moved to Yeri-nat. And from that time on, their journey through torment began. They were frightened off by the border guards, and they went down the Bolshoy Abakan to Shcheki, built a hut there, and soon another one (on Soksa), more distant from the shore, and lived on pasture...
Around them, in particular in Abaza, the mining town closest to the Lykovs, they knew that the Lykovs must be somewhere. It was not only heard that they survived. That the Lykovs were alive became known in 1978, when geologists appeared there. They were selecting sites for landing research parties and came across the “tame” arable lands of the Lykovs.
What you said, Lev Stepanovich, about the high culture of relations and the entire life of the Lykovs is confirmed by the conclusions of those scientific expeditions that visited the Lykovs in the late 80s. Scientists were amazed not only by the truly heroic will and hard work of the Lykovs, but also by their remarkable mind. In 1988, candidates who visited them. agricultural sciences V. Shadursky, associate professor of the Ishim Pedagogical Institute and candidate. agricultural sciences research fellow Research Institute of Potato Farming O. Poletaeva was surprised by many things. It is worth citing some facts that scientists have noticed.
The Lykovs' vegetable garden could become a role model for other modern farms. Located on the mountainside at an angle of 40-50 degrees, it went up 300 meters. Having divided the site into lower, middle and upper, the Lykovs placed crops taking into account their biological characteristics. The fractional sowing allowed them to better preserve the harvest. There were absolutely no crop diseases.
The seeds were prepared especially carefully. Three weeks before planting, potato tubers were laid in a thin layer indoors on stilts. A fire was made under the floor, heating up the boulders. And the stones, giving off heat, heated the seed material evenly and for a long time.
The seeds were necessarily checked for germination. They were propagated in a special area.
The timing of sowing was strictly approached, taking into account the biological characteristics of different crops. The dates were selected optimal for the local climate.
Despite the fact that the Lykovs planted the same variety of potatoes for fifty years, they did not degenerate. The content of starch and dry matter was significantly higher than that of most modern varieties. Neither the tubers nor the plants contained any viral or any other infection.
Knowing nothing about nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the Lykovs nevertheless applied fertilizers according to advanced agronomic science: “all sorts of rubbish” from cones, grass and leaves, that is, composts rich in nitrogen, were used for hemp and all spring crops. Under turnips, beets, and potatoes, ash was added - a source of potassium necessary for root vegetables.
“Hard work, intelligence, knowledge of the laws of the taiga,” the scientists summarized, “allowed the family to provide themselves with everything they needed. Moreover, it was food rich not only in proteins, but also in vitamins.”
Several expeditions of philologists from Kazan University visited the Lykovs, studying phonetics in an isolated “patch.” G. Slesar-va and V. Markelov, knowing that the Lykovs were reluctant to come into contact with “aliens,” in order to gain trust and hear the reading, worked with the Lykovs side by side early in the morning. “And then one day Agafya took a notebook in which “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” was copied by hand. Scientists replaced only some of the modernized letters with ancient ones, more familiar to Lykova. She carefully opened the text, silently looked through the pages and began to read melodiously... Now we know not only the pronunciation, but also the intonation of the great text... So “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” turned out to be written down for eternity, perhaps by the last “speaker” on earth ”, as if coming from the times of the “Word...” itself.
The next expedition of Kazan residents noticed a linguistic phenomenon among the Lykovs - the juxtaposition of two dialects in one family: the North Great Russian dialect of Karp Iosifovich and the South Great Russian dialect (akanya) inherent in Agafya. Agafya also remembered the poems about the destruction of the Olonevsky monastery - which was the largest in the Nizhny Novgorod region. “There is no price for authentic evidence of the destruction of a large Old Believer nest,” said A. S. Lebedev, a representative of the Russian Old Believer Church, who visited the Lykovs in 1989. “Taiga Dawn” - he called his essays about the trip to Agafya, emphasizing his complete disagreement with the conclusions of V. Peskov.
Kazan philologists on the fact of Lykovskaya colloquial speech explained the so-called “nasality” in church services. It turns out that it comes from Byzantine traditions.
Lev Stepanovich, it turns out that it was from the moment people came to the Lykovs that the active invasion of our civilization into their habitat began, which simply could not help but cause harm. After all, we have different approaches to life, different types behavior, different attitudes towards everything. Not to mention the fact that the Lykovs never suffered from our diseases and, naturally, were completely defenseless against them.
After the sudden death of three children of Karp Iosifovich, Professor I. Nazarov suggested that the reason for their death was weak immunity. Subsequent blood tests conducted by Professor Nazarov showed that they were immune only to encephalitis. They could not even resist our ordinary diseases. I know that V. Peskov talks about other reasons. But here is the opinion of Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Igor Pavlovich Nazarov.
He says that there is a clear connection between the Lykovs’ so-called “colds” and their contacts with other people. He explains this by the fact that the Lykov children were born and lived without meeting anyone from the outside, and did not acquire specific immunity against various diseases and viruses.
As soon as the Lykovs began visiting geologists, their illnesses took on serious forms. “As soon as I go to the village, I get sick,” Agafya concluded back in 1985. The danger that awaits Agafya due to her weakened immune system is evidenced by the death of her brothers and sisters in 1981.
“We can judge what they died from,” says Nazarov, “only from the stories of Karp Iosifovich and Agafya. V. Peskov concludes from these stories that the reason was hypothermia. Dmitry, who fell ill first, helped Savvin put up a fence (fence) in ice water, together they dug potatoes from under the snow... Natalya washed them in a stream with ice...
All this is true. But was the situation really so extreme for the Lykovs when they had to work in the snow or in cold water? With us, they easily walked barefoot in the snow for a long time without any health consequences. No, not in the usual cooling of the body main reason their death, but that... shortly before the illness, the family again visited the geologists in the village. When they returned, they all fell ill: cough, runny nose, sore throat, chills. But I had to dig potatoes. And in general, the usual thing for them turned out to be for three fatal disease, because already sick people were exposed to hypothermia.”
And Karp Iosifovich, Professor Nazarov believes, contrary to V. Peskov’s statements, did not die from senile decrepitude, although he was indeed already 87 years old. “Suspecting that a doctor with 30 years of experience could have overlooked the patient’s age, Vasily Mikhailovich leaves out of the brackets of his reasoning the fact that Agafya was the first to fall ill after her next visit to the village. When she returned, she fell ill. The next day Karp Iosifovich fell ill. And a week later he died. Agafya was ill for another month. But before I left, I left her the pills and explained how to take them. Fortunately, she accurately identified herself in this situation. Karp Iosifovich remained true to himself and refused pills.
Now about his decrepitude. Just two years earlier he had broken his leg. I arrived when he was already for a long time did not move and lost heart. Krasnoyarsk traumatologist V. Timoshkov and I applied conservative treatment and applied plaster. But, to be honest, I didn’t expect him to pull through. And a month later, in response to my question about his well-being, Karp Iosifovich took his stick and left the hut. Moreover, he began to work around the house. It was a real miracle. An 85-year-old man has a fused meniscus, at a time when this happens extremely rarely even in young people, and he has to undergo surgery. In a word, the old man still had a huge reserve of vitality..."
V. Peskov also argued that the Lykovs could have been ruined by the “long-term stress” that they experienced due to the fact that the meeting with people allegedly gave rise to many painful questions, disputes and strife in the family. “Talking about this,” says Professor Nazarov, “Vasily Mikhailovich repeats the well-known truth that stress can depress the immune system... But he forgets that stress cannot be long-lasting, and by the time the three Lykovs died, their acquaintance with geologists it has been going on for three years already. There are no facts indicating that this acquaintance produced a revolution in the minds of family members. But there is irrefutable data from Agafya’s blood test, confirming that there was no immunity, so there was nothing to suppress stress.”
Let us note, by the way, that I.P. Nazarov, taking into account the specifics of his patients, prepared Agafya and her father for the first blood test for five years (!), and when he took it, he stayed with the Lykovs for another two days to monitor their condition.
Hard to understand to modern man motives for a concentrated, suffering life, a life of faith. We judge everything hastily, with labels, like judges to everyone. One of the journalists even calculated how little the Lykovs saw in life, having settled in a patch of only 15x15 kilometers in the taiga; that they didn’t even know that Antarctica existed, that the Earth was a ball. By the way, Christ also did not know that the Earth is round and that Antarctica exists, but no one blames him for this, realizing that this is not the knowledge that is vitally necessary for man. But the Lykovs knew better than us what is absolutely necessary in life. Dostoevsky said that only suffering can teach a person something - this is the main law of life on Earth. The Lykovs' life turned out in such a way that they drank this cup in full, accepting the fatal law as their personal destiny.
The eminent journalist reproached the Lykovs for not even knowing that “besides Nikon and Peter I, it turns out that great people Galileo, Columbus, Lenin lived on earth...” He even allowed himself to claim that because of this that “they didn’t know this, the Lykovs had only a grain of their sense of homeland.”
But the Lykovs didn’t have to love the Motherland like a book, in words, as we do, because they were part of the Motherland itself and never separated it, like their faith, from themselves. The homeland was inside the Lykovs, which means it was always with them and them.
Vasily Mikhailovich Peskov writes about some kind of “dead end” in the fate of the taiga hermits the Lykovs. Although how can a person be at a dead end if he lives and does everything according to his conscience? And a person will never meet a dead end if he lives according to his conscience, without looking at anyone, without trying to get along, to please... On the contrary, his personality reveals itself and blossoms. Look at Agafya's face - this is the face of a happy, balanced, spiritualized person who is in harmony with the foundations of his secluded taiga life.
O. Mandelstam concluded that “double existence is an absolute fact of our life.” Having heard the story about the Lykovs, the reader has the right to doubt: yes, the fact is very common, but not absolute. And the history of the Lykovs proves this to us. Mandelstam learned this and came to terms with it, we and our civilization know this and come to terms with it, but the Lykovs found out and did not come to terms with it. They didn’t want to live against their conscience, they didn’t want to live a double life. But adherence to truth and conscience is true spirituality, which we all seem to worry about out loud. “The Lykovs left to live on their report, they went to the feat of piety,” says Lev Cherepanov, and it’s hard to disagree with him.
We see in the Lykovs traits of genuine Russianness, what has always made Russians Russian and what we all lack now: the desire for truth, the desire for freedom, for the free expression of our spirit. When Agafya was invited to live with relatives in the mountainous Shoria, she said: “There is no desert in Kilensk, there cannot be extensive life there.” And again: “It’s no good to turn back from a good deed.”
What real conclusion can we draw from everything that happened? Having thoughtlessly invaded a reality we did not understand, we destroyed it. Normal contact with the “aliens of the taiga” did not take place - the disastrous results are obvious.
May this serve us all as a cruel lesson for future meetings.
Maybe with real aliens...Izba Lykov. They lived in it for thirty-two years.
In Soviet society, the Lykovs' story was treated differently. Some considered them parasites, although these people managed to set up a huge household without modern tools, others considered them ignorant and illiterate, despite the fact that they kept a calendar accurately all their lives, and their mother taught all four children to read and write from the Psalter, albeit in Old Russian . The family had both books and icons.
In 1988, Karp Lykov died. Thus, Agafya Lykova remained the only one from the family of Sayan hermits. In 2013, she reunited with the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church.
Despite the fact that Agafya was born after her parents left the world, she was the most literate member of the family, and therefore it was she who was assigned to conduct home church services. After the death of her father, she managed to contact her relatives, but the relationship with them did not work out. In 1990, Agafya Lykova took monastic vows in the Old Believer convent, but a few months later she returned back to the monastery, citing ill health and “ideological differences” with the nuns of the monastery.
The last hermit from the Lykov family was often visited by the most different people– travelers, journalists, writers, representatives of various religious denominations. The monastic novices lived with her, as well as volunteer housekeepers. However, none of them stayed long - they were too heavy to borrow living conditions, and the younger Lykova’s character is not great, it’s not easy to get along with her.
Lykova’s patronage was provided by the governor of the neighboring Kemerovo Region, Aman Tuleyev, who repeatedly ordered the delivery of necessary things and products to her, as well as the provision of medical care.
Agafya Lykova flatly refuses to go live in more civilized conditions. She is sure that it is here, in the taiga, in the open air, far from the temptations of civilization, that life is most correct from a spiritual point of view. Of course, you can argue here, but there is something to think about.
Clothes made from hemp, shoes made from birch bark, fire using flint. Summer is scary wild animals, in winter - frost and waist-deep snow. No benefits of civilization, but to the nearest settlement 250 kilometers.
40 years ago, while flying around the remote taiga in a helicopter, Soviet geologists noticed a vegetable garden in deserted places in the upper reaches of the Abakan River. It turned out that a family of Old Believers, the Lykovs, lived in the forest - a father and four adult children. For many years they were cut off from the world, but after one newspaper article they became known throughout the Soviet Union.
A couple of years later, in 1982, Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist Vasily Peskov went to the hermits. Expecting to see a family of five, he found only father Karp, his daughter Agafya and three fresh graves. Two brothers and a sister died one after another from illness. In 1988, Father Karp also died, leaving only Agafya in the forest, who did not want to change her way of life.
A destructive civilization
Unknowing people blamed Peskov for the death of the Lykovs from unusual contact with the outside world. The journalist was very worried about this, because it was he who tried to protect them from the crowds of onlookers. For many years he visited the Lykovs - he helped, brought kitchen utensils, medicines and even a goat, so that the hermits always had fresh milk.
In one of the last meetings with Agafya, the now deceased Peskov asked her whether it was good in her opinion that people “found” their family. Agafya admitted that it seemed to her that God had sent them people. If it weren't for people, they would have died long ago.
Vladimir Shelkov/TASS
“What our life was like - we were worn out, all the pieces of clothing [clothing] were in patches. It’s scary to remember that we ate grass and bark,” Komsomolskaya Pravda quotes Agafya.
How did forest robinsons become famous?
Based on the results of meetings with the Lykovs, Peskov wrote a series of essays. The story of the hermits captivated many: for every issue about the Lykovs, queues lined up at newsstands.
Ilya Pitalev/Sputnik
Peskov told friends that Brezhnev’s wife sent a special person to the kiosk in the morning to quickly buy her “Komsomolskaya Pravda” - she was so eager to read the continuation of the saga about the Siberian hermits. Later, Peskov’s essays were published as a separate book, “Taiga Dead End,” which was translated into many languages.
Why did the Lykovs climb into the forests?
Throughout Russia there were many people who fled and hid for religious reasons (and the media still writes about such cases from time to time). Old Believers in Russia have always suffered persecution, only Tsar Nicholas II stopped it. But after the revolution, the Soviet government took charge of them new strength- forced people to join collective farms, put them in prison.
After collectivization, the Lykov family climbed further into the forest and ended up on the territory of a nature reserve. In the 1930s, the authorities of the reserve forbade them from hunting and fishing.
Ilya Pitalev/Sputnik
One day an anonymous denunciation came that the Old Believers were poachers. The reserve guards went to check it out and accidentally shot Karp Lykov's brother. However, the investigation described everything as if it were the Old Believers who offered armed resistance.
In 1937, the most terrible year great terror, the NKVD came to the Lykovs and began asking them in detail about what had happened. Family members realized they had to escape. Since then, they have climbed further and further into the taiga, constantly changing their place of residence, covering their tracks.
Star Agafya
Now Agafya is 74 years old, she has been living alone in the forest for 30 years. The only time Agafya tried to go out in public was in 1990. The woman came to live in the chapel Old Believer monastery, which professed priestlessness, and even took monastic vows as a nun. However, Agafya’s view of faith turned out to be different, and she returned to her settlement. In 2011, representatives of the official Russian Old Believer Church came to Agafya and performed baptism according to all the rules.
Ilya Pitalev/Sputnik
Local authorities support Agafya, former governor Kemerovo region Aman Tuleyev repeatedly ordered that the hermit be provided with all necessary help. Interest in the lonely hermit is only growing every year. Film crews, journalists, doctors and volunteers visit her.
In 2015, a British film crew led by director Rebecca Marshall came to Agafya to film a documentary about her life, “The Forest in Me.”
Ilya Pitalev/Sputnik
Agafya considers solitude the main path to the salvation of the soul. Although she does not consider herself lonely. “There is always a guardian angel next to every Christian, as well as Christ and the apostles,” the hermit believes.
The famous hermit Agafya Karpovna Lykova, who lives on a farm in the upper reaches of the Erinat River in Western Siberia, 300 km from civilization, was born in 1945. On April 16 she celebrates her name day (her birthday is not known). Agafya is the only surviving representative of the Lykov family of Old Believers hermits. The family was discovered by geologists on June 15, 1978 in the upper reaches of the Abakan River (Khakassia).
The Lykov family of Old Believers lived in isolation since 1937. There were six people in the family: Karp Osipovich (b. 1899) with his wife Akulina Karpovna and their children: Savin (b. 1926), Natalia (b. 1936), Dimitry (b. 1940) and Agafya (b. 1945).
In 1923, the settlement of the Old Believers was destroyed and several families moved further into the mountains. Around 1937, Lykov, his wife and two children left the community, settled separately in a remote place, but lived openly. In the fall of 1945, a patrol came to their home looking for deserters, which alerted the Lykovs. The family moved to another place, living from that moment on secretly, in complete isolation from the world.
The Lykovs were engaged in farming, fishing and hunting. The fish was salted, stored for the winter, and fish oil was extracted at home. Having no contact with the outside world, the family lived according to the laws of the Old Believers; the hermits tried to protect the family from the influence of the external environment, especially in relation to faith. Thanks to their mother, the Lykov children were literate. Despite such a long isolation, the Lykovs did not lose track of time and performed home worship.
By the time geologists discovered there were five taiga inhabitants - the head of the family, Karp Osipovich, sons Savvin, Dimitry and daughters Natalya and Agafya (Akulina Karpovna died in 1961). Currently, from that large family, only the youngest, Agafya, remains. In 1981, Savvin, Dimitry and Natalya died one after another, and in 1988 Karp Osipovich passed away.
Publications in central newspapers made the Lykov family widely known. Relatives showed up in the Kuzbass village of Kilinsk, inviting the Lykovs to move in with them, but they refused.
Since 1988, Agafya Lykova has lived alone in the Sayan taiga, on Erinata. Her family life did not work out. She also did not succeed in joining a monastery - discrepancies in religious doctrine with the nuns were discovered. Several years ago, former geologist Erofey Sedov moved to these places and now, like a neighbor, helps the hermit with fishing and hunting. Lykova’s farm is small: goats, a dog, cats and chickens. Agafya Karpovna also keeps a vegetable garden in which she grows potatoes and cabbage.
Relatives living in Kilinsk have been calling Agafya to move in with them for many years. But Agafya, although she began to suffer from loneliness and strength began to leave her due to age and illness, does not want to leave the lease.
Several years ago, Lykova was taken by helicopter to receive treatment at the waters of the Goryachy Klyuch spring; she twice traveled by rail to see distant relatives, and even received treatment in a city hospital. She boldly uses measuring instruments hitherto unknown to her (thermometer, watch).
Agafya greets each new day with prayer and goes to bed with it every day.
Vasily Peskov, a journalist and writer, dedicated his book “Taiga Dead End” to the Lykov family
How did the Lykovs manage to live in complete isolation for almost 40 years?
The Lykovs' refuge is a canyon of the upper reaches of the Abakan River in the Sayan Mountains, next to Tuva. The place is inaccessible, wild - steep mountains covered with forest, and a river between them. They hunted, fished, and collected mushrooms, berries and nuts in the taiga. They planted a garden in which they grew barley, wheat and vegetables. They were engaged in hemp spinning and weaving, providing themselves with clothing. The Lykovs' vegetable garden could become a role model for other modern farms. Located on the mountainside at an angle of 40-50 degrees, it went up 300 meters. Having divided the site into lower, middle and upper, the Lykovs placed crops taking into account their biological characteristics. The fractional sowing allowed them to better preserve the harvest. There were absolutely no crop diseases. To maintain a high yield, potatoes were grown in one place for no more than three years. The Lykovs also established crop rotation. The seeds were prepared especially carefully. Three weeks before planting, potato tubers were laid in a thin layer indoors on stilts. A fire was made under the floor, heating up the boulders. And the stones, giving off heat, heated the seed material evenly and for a long time. The seeds were necessarily checked for germination. They were propagated in a special area. The timing of sowing was strictly approached, taking into account the biological characteristics of different crops. The dates were selected optimal for the local climate. Despite the fact that the Lykovs planted the same variety of potatoes for fifty years, they did not degenerate. The content of starch and dry matter was significantly higher than that of most modern varieties. Neither the tubers nor the plants contained any viral or any other infection. Knowing nothing about nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the Lykovs nevertheless applied fertilizers according to advanced agronomic science: “all sorts of rubbish” from cones, grass and leaves, that is, composts rich in nitrogen, were used for hemp and all spring crops. Under turnips, beets, and potatoes, ash was added - a source of potassium necessary for root vegetables. Hard work, sound mind, knowledge of the taiga allowed the family to provide themselves with everything they needed. Moreover, it was food rich not only in proteins, but also in vitamins.
The cruel irony is that it was not the difficulties of taiga life, but the harsh climate, but contact with civilization that proved disastrous for the Lykovs. All of them, except for Agafya Lykova, died shortly after the first contact with the geologists who found them, having become infected from the aliens with infectious diseases hitherto unknown to them. Strong and consistent in her convictions, Agafya, not wanting to “make peace,” still lives alone in her hut on the banks of a mountain tributary of the Erinat River. Agafya is happy with the gifts and products that hunters and geologists occasionally bring her, but she categorically refuses to accept products that have the “seal of the Antichrist” on them - a computer barcode. Several years ago, Agafya took monastic vows and became a nun.
It should be noted that the Lykovs’ case is not at all unique. This family became widely known to the outside world only because they themselves made contact with people, and, by chance, came to the attention of journalists from central Soviet newspapers. In the Siberian taiga there are secret monasteries, monasteries and secret places where people live who, due to their religious beliefs, have deliberately cut off all contact with the outside world. There are also a large number of remote villages and hamlets, whose residents keep such contacts to a minimum. The collapse of industrial civilization will not be the end of the world for these people.
It should be noted that the Lykovs belonged to the rather moderate Old Believer sense of the “chapels” and were not religious radicals, similar to the sense of the wandering runners, who made complete withdrawal from the world part of their religious doctrine. It’s just that solid Siberian men, even at the dawn of industrialization in Russia, understood where everything was heading and decided not to be slaughtered in the name of who knows whose interests. Let us remember that during that period, while the Lykovs were eking out a living from turnips to cedar cones, bloody waves of collectivization, mass repressions of the 30s, mobilization, war, occupation of part of the territory, restoration of the “national” economy, repressions of the 50s, etc. took place in Russia. the so-called consolidation of collective farms (read - the destruction of small remote villages - of course! After all, everyone should live under the supervision of the authorities). According to some estimates, during this period the population of Russia decreased by 35 - 40%! The Lykovs also did not do without losses, but they lived freely, with dignity, masters of themselves, on a section of taiga measuring 15 square kilometers. This was their World, their Earth, which gave them everything they needed.
In recent years, we have been talking a lot about a possible meeting with inhabitants of other worlds - representatives of alien civilizations that are reaching out to us from Space.
What is not discussed? How to negotiate with them? Will our immunity work against unknown diseases? Will diverse cultures converge or collide?
And very close - literally before our eyes - is a living example of such a meeting.
We are talking about the dramatic fate of the Lykov family, who lived for almost 40 years in the Altai taiga in complete isolation - in their own world. Our civilization of the 20th century collapsed on the primitive reality of taiga hermits. And what? We did not accept their spiritual world. We did not protect them from our diseases. We failed to understand their life principles. And we destroyed their already established civilization, which we did not understand and did not accept.
The first reports of the discovery of a family in an inaccessible region of the Western Sayan Mountains, which had lived without any connection with the outside world for more than forty years, appeared in print in 1980, first in the first newspaper “Socialist Industry”, then in “Krasnoyarsky Rabochiy”. And then, in 1982, a series of articles about this family was published by Komsomolskaya Pravda. They wrote that the family consisted of five people: father - Karp Iosifovich, his two sons - Dmitry and Savvin and two daughters - Natalya and Agafya. Their last name is Lykov.
They wrote that in the thirties they voluntarily left the world on the basis of religious fanaticism. They wrote a lot about them, but with a precisely measured portion of sympathy. “Measured” because even then those who took this story to heart were struck by the arrogant, civilized and condescending attitude of Soviet journalism, which dubbed the amazing life of a Russian family in forest solitude a “taiga dead end.” Expressing approval of Lykov in particular, Soviet journalists assessed the entire life of the family categorically and unambiguously:
- “life and everyday life are wretched to the extreme, they listened to the story of present life and the most important events in it like Martians”;
- “In this wretched life, the sense of beauty given to man by nature was also killed. Not a flower in the hut, no decoration in it. No attempt to decorate clothes, things... The Lykovs didn’t know songs”;
- “the younger Lykovs did not have the precious opportunity for humans to communicate with their own kind, did not know love, and could not continue their family line. The culprit is a fanatical dark belief in a force that lies beyond the boundaries of existence, called God. Religion was undoubtedly a support in this suffering life. But she was also the cause of the terrible deadlock.”
Despite the desire not stated in these publications to “cause sympathy,” the Soviet press, assessing the Lykovs’ life as a whole, called it “a complete mistake,” “almost a fossil case in human existence.” As if forgetting that we are still talking about people, Soviet journalists declared the discovery of the Lykov family “the discovery of a living mammoth,” as if hinting that over the years of forest life the Lykovs had fallen so far behind our correct and advanced life that they cannot be considered to civilization in general.
True, even then the attentive reader noticed the discrepancy between the accusatory assessments and the facts cited by the same journalists. They wrote about the “darkness” of the Lykovs’ life, and while they were counting the days, throughout their hermit life they never made a mistake in the calendar; Karp Iosifovich’s wife taught all the children to read and write from the Psalter, which, like other religious books, was carefully preserved in the family; Savvin even knew the Holy Scriptures by heart; and after the launch of the first Earth satellite in 1957, Karp Iosifovich noted: “The stars soon began to walk across the sky.”
Journalists wrote about the Lykovs as fanatics of the faith - and it was not only not customary for the Lykovs to teach others, but even to speak badly about them. (Let us note in parentheses that some of Agafya’s words, to give greater persuasiveness to some journalistic arguments, were invented by the journalists themselves.)
To be fair, it must be said that not everyone shared this given point of view of the party press. There were also those who wrote about the Lykovs differently - with respect for their spiritual strength, for their life feat. They wrote, but very little, because the newspapers did not provide an opportunity to defend the name and honor of the Russian Lykov family from accusations of darkness, ignorance, and fanaticism.
One of these people was the writer Lev Stepanovich Cherepanov, who visited the Lykovs a month after the first report about them. Together with him were Doctor of Medical Sciences, Head of the Department of Anesthesiology of the Krasnoyarsk Institute for Advanced Medical Studies, Professor I.P. Nazarov and the head physician of the 20th Hospital of Krasnoyarsk V. Golovin. Even then, in October 1980, Cherepanov asked the regional leadership to introduce a complete ban on visits to the Lykovs by random people, suggesting, based on familiarity with the medical literature, that such visits could threaten the life of the Lykovs. And the Lykovs appeared before Lev Cherepanov as completely different people than from the pages of the party press.
People who have met the Lykovs since 1978, says Cherepanov, judged them by their clothes. When they saw that the Lykovs had everything homespun, that their hats were made from musk deer fur, and that their means of struggling for existence were primitive, they hastily concluded that the hermits were far behind us. That is, they began to judge the Lykovs downwards, as people of a lower class compared to themselves. But then it turned out how disgusting they are if they look at us as weak people who need to be looked after. After all, “save” literally means “help.” I then asked Professor Nazarov: “Igor Pavlovich, maybe you are happier than me and have seen this in our lives? When would you come to your boss, and he, leaving the table and shaking your hand, asks how I can be useful to you?
He laughed and said that in our country such a question would be interpreted incorrectly, that is, there would be a suspicion that they wanted to accommodate someone halfway out of some self-interest, and our behavior would be perceived as ingratiating.
From that moment it became clear that we turned out to be people who think differently than the Lykovs. Naturally, it was worth wondering who else they greet like that - with a friendly disposition? It turned out - everyone! Here R. Rozhdestvensky wrote the song “Where the Motherland Begins.” From this, that, the third... - remember her words. But for the Lykovs, the Motherland begins with one’s neighbor. A man came - and the Motherland begins with him. Not from the ABC book, not from the street, not from the house - but from the one who came. Once he came, it means he turned out to be a neighbor. And how can one not render him a feasible service?
This is what immediately divided us. And we understood: yes, indeed, the Lykovs have a semi-natural or even subsistence economy, but their moral potential turned out to be, or rather remained, very high. We lost it. According to the Lykovs, you can see with your own eyes what side results we acquired in the struggle for technical achievements after 1917. After all, the most important thing for us is the highest labor productivity. So we drove productivity. And while taking care of the body, it would be necessary not to forget about the spirit, because the spirit and the body, despite their opposition, must exist in unity. And when the balance between them is disturbed, then an inferior person appears.
Yes, we were better equipped, we had boots with thick soles, sleeping bags, shirts that were not torn by branches, trousers no worse than these shirts, stewed meat, condensed milk, lard - whatever you wanted. But it turned out that the Lykovs were morally superior to us, and this immediately predetermined the entire relationship with the Lykovs. This watershed has passed, regardless of whether we wanted to reckon with it or not.
We were not the first to come to the Lykovs. Many people have met with them since 1978, and when Karp Iosifovich determined by some gestures that I was the eldest in the group of “lay people,” he called me aside and asked: “Would you like to take it as yours, as they say there?” , wife, fur on the collar?” Of course, I immediately objected, which greatly surprised Karp Iosifovich, because he was used to people taking his furs. I told Professor Nazarov about this incident. He, naturally, replied that this should not happen in our relationship. From that moment on, we began to separate ourselves from other visitors. If we came and did something, it was only “for the sake of it.” We didn’t take anything from the Lykovs, and the Lykovs didn’t know how to treat us. Who are we?
Has civilization already shown itself to them differently?
Yes, and it seems like we are from the same civilization, but we don’t smoke or drink. And in addition, we don’t take sables. And then we worked hard, helping the Lykovs with the housework: sawing stumps down to the ground, chopping firewood, reroofing the house where Savvin and Dmitry lived. And we thought we were doing a very good job. But still, after some time, on our other visit, Agafya, not seeing that I was passing nearby, said to my father: “But the brothers worked better.” My friends were surprised: “How can it be, we were sweating ourselves.” And then we realized: we had forgotten how to work. After the Lykovs came to this conclusion, they already treated us condescendingly.
With the Lykovs, we saw with our own eyes that family is an anvil, and work is not just work “from” to “to”. Their work is a concern. About whom? About your neighbor. A brother's neighbor is a brother, sisters. And so on.
Then, the Lykovs had a piece of land, hence their independence. They met us without fawning or turning up their noses - as equals. Because they didn't have to gain anyone's favor, recognition or praise. Everything they needed, they could take from their piece of land, or from the taiga, or from the river. Many of the tools were made by them themselves. Even if they did not meet any modern aesthetic requirements, they were quite suitable for this or that job.
This is where the difference between the Lykovs and us began to appear. The Lykovs can be imagined as people from 1917, that is, from the pre-revolutionary era. You won’t see people like that anymore - we’ve all leveled out. And the difference between us, representatives of the modern civilization and the pre-revolutionary Lykov civilization, one way or another had to come out, one way or another characterizing both the Lykovs and us. I do not blame the journalists - Yuri Sventitsky, Nikolai Zhuravlev, Vasily Peskov, because, you see, they did not try to tell about the Lykovs truthfully and without bias. Since they considered the Lykovs to be victims of themselves, victims of faith, then these journalists themselves should be recognized as victims of our 70 years. This was our moral: everything that benefits the revolution is right. We didn’t even think about the individual; we were used to judging everyone from class positions. And Yuri Sventitsky immediately “saw through” the Lykovs. He called Karp Iosifovich a deserter, called him a parasite, but there was no evidence. Well, the reader knew nothing about desertion, but what about “parasitism”? How could the Lykovs parasitize away from people, how could they profit at someone else’s expense?
For them it was simply impossible. Nevertheless, no one protested the speech of Yu. Sventitsky in “Socialist Industry” or the speech of N. Zhuravlev in “Krasnoyarsk Worker”. Mostly pensioners responded to my rare articles - they expressed sympathy and did not reason at all. I notice that the reader has completely forgotten how or does not want to reason and think for himself - he only loves everything ready-made.
Lev Stepanovich, so what do we now know for certain about the Lykovs? After all, publications about them were guilty not only of inaccuracies, but also of distortions.
Let's take a piece of their life in Tishi, on the Bolshoi Abakan River, before collectivization. In the 20s, it was a settlement “in one estate”, where the Lykov family lived. When the CHON detachments appeared, the peasants began to worry, and they began to move to the Lykovs. From the Lykovsky repair a small village of 10-12 courtyards grew. Those who moved in with the Lykovs, naturally, told what was happening in the world; they were all looking for salvation from the new government. In 1929, a certain Konstantin Kukolnikov appeared in the Lykovo village with instructions to create an artel that was supposed to engage in fishing and hunting.
In the same year, the Lykovs, not wanting to be enrolled in the artel, since they were accustomed to an independent life and had heard enough about what was in store for them, got together and left all together: three brothers - Stepan, Karp Iosifovich and Evdokim, their father, mother and the one who performed service with them, as well as close relatives. Karp Iosifovich was then 28 years old, he was not married. By the way, he never led the community, as they wrote about it, and the Lykovs never belonged to the sect of “runners.” All the Lykovs migrated along the Bolshoi Abakan River and found shelter there. They did not live secretly, but appeared in Tishi to buy threads for knitting nets; together with the Tishin people they set up a hospital on Goryachiy Klyuch. And only a year later Karp Iosifovich went to Altai and brought his wife Akulina Karpovna. And there, in the taiga, one might say, in the Lykovsky upper reaches of the Big Abakan, their children were born.
In 1932, the Altai Nature Reserve was formed, the border of which covered not only Altai, but also part of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The Lykovs who settled there ended up in this part. They were presented with demands: they were not allowed to shoot, fish or plow the land. They had to get out of there. In 1935, the Lykovs went to Altai to visit their relatives and lived first on the Tropins’ “vater”, and then in a dugout. Karp Iosifovich visited the Prilavok, which is near the mouth of Soksu. There, in his garden, under Karp Iosifovich, Evdokim was shot by huntsmen. Then the Lykovs moved to Yeri-nat. And from that time on, their journey through torment began. They were frightened off by the border guards, and they went down the Bolshoy Abakan to Shcheki, built a hut there, and soon another one (on Soksa), more distant from the shore, and lived on pasture...
Around them, in particular in Abaza, the mining town closest to the Lykovs, they knew that the Lykovs must be somewhere. It was not only heard that they survived. That the Lykovs were alive became known in 1978, when geologists appeared there. They were selecting sites for landing research parties and came across the “tame” arable lands of the Lykovs.
What you said, Lev Stepanovich, about the high culture of relations and the entire life of the Lykovs is confirmed by the conclusions of those scientific expeditions that visited the Lykovs in the late 80s. Scientists were amazed not only by the truly heroic will and hard work of the Lykovs, but also by their remarkable mind. In 1988, candidates who visited them. agricultural sciences V. Shadursky, associate professor of the Ishim Pedagogical Institute and candidate of sciences. Agricultural Sciences, researcher at the Research Institute of Potato Farming O. Poletaeva, was surprised by many things. It is worth citing some facts that scientists have noticed.
The Lykovs' vegetable garden could become a role model for other modern farms. Located on the mountainside at an angle of 40-50 degrees, it went up 300 meters. Having divided the site into lower, middle and upper, the Lykovs placed crops taking into account their biological characteristics. The fractional sowing allowed them to better preserve the harvest. There were absolutely no crop diseases.
The seeds were prepared especially carefully. Three weeks before planting, potato tubers were laid in a thin layer indoors on stilts. A fire was made under the floor, heating up the boulders. And the stones, giving off heat, heated the seed material evenly and for a long time.
The seeds were necessarily checked for germination. They were propagated in a special area.
The timing of sowing was strictly approached, taking into account the biological characteristics of different crops. The dates were selected optimal for the local climate.
Despite the fact that the Lykovs planted the same variety of potatoes for fifty years, they did not degenerate. The content of starch and dry matter was significantly higher than that of most modern varieties. Neither the tubers nor the plants contained any viral or any other infection.
Knowing nothing about nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the Lykovs nevertheless applied fertilizers according to advanced agronomic science: “all sorts of rubbish” from cones, grass and leaves, that is, composts rich in nitrogen, were used for hemp and all spring crops. Under turnips, beets, and potatoes, ash was added - a source of potassium necessary for root vegetables.
“Hard work, intelligence, knowledge of the laws of the taiga,” the scientists summarized, “allowed the family to provide themselves with everything they needed. Moreover, it was food rich not only in proteins, but also in vitamins.”
Several expeditions of philologists from Kazan University visited the Lykovs, studying phonetics in an isolated “patch.” G. Slesar-va and V. Markelov, knowing that the Lykovs were reluctant to come into contact with “aliens,” in order to gain trust and hear the reading, worked with the Lykovs side by side early in the morning. “And then one day Agafya took a notebook in which “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” was copied by hand. Scientists replaced only some of the modernized letters with ancient ones, more familiar to Lykova. She carefully opened the text, silently looked through the pages and began to read melodiously... Now we know not only the pronunciation, but also the intonation of the great text... So “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” turned out to be written down for eternity, perhaps by the last “speaker” on earth ”, as if coming from the times of the “Word...” itself.
The next expedition of Kazan residents noticed a linguistic phenomenon among the Lykovs - the juxtaposition of two dialects in one family: the North Great Russian dialect of Karp Iosifovich and the South Great Russian dialect (akanya) inherent in Agafya. Agafya also remembered the poems about the destruction of the Olonevsky monastery - which was the largest in the Nizhny Novgorod region. “There is no price for authentic evidence of the destruction of a large Old Believer nest,” said A. S. Lebedev, a representative of the Russian Old Believer Church, who visited the Lykovs in 1989. “Taiga Dawn” - he called his essays about the trip to Agafya, emphasizing his complete disagreement with the conclusions of V. Peskov.
Kazan philologists used the fact of Lykov’s colloquial speech to explain the so-called “nasality” in church services. It turns out that it comes from Byzantine traditions.
Lev Stepanovich, it turns out that it was from the moment people came to the Lykovs that the active invasion of our civilization into their habitat began, which simply could not help but cause harm. After all, we have different approaches to life, different types of behavior, different attitudes towards everything. Not to mention the fact that the Lykovs never suffered from our diseases and, naturally, were completely defenseless against them.
After the sudden death of three children of Karp Iosifovich, Professor I. Nazarov suggested that the reason for their death was weak immunity. Subsequent blood tests conducted by Professor Nazarov showed that they were immune only to encephalitis. They could not even resist our ordinary diseases. I know that V. Peskov talks about other reasons. But here is the opinion of Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Igor Pavlovich Nazarov.
He says that there is a clear connection between the Lykovs’ so-called “colds” and their contacts with other people. He explains this by the fact that the Lykov children were born and lived without meeting anyone from the outside, and did not acquire specific immunity against various diseases and viruses.
As soon as the Lykovs began visiting geologists, their illnesses took on serious forms. “As soon as I go to the village, I get sick,” Agafya concluded back in 1985. The danger that awaits Agafya due to her weakened immune system is evidenced by the death of her brothers and sisters in 1981.
“We can judge what they died from,” says Nazarov, “only from the stories of Karp Iosifovich and Agafya. V. Peskov concludes from these stories that the reason was hypothermia. Dmitry, who fell ill first, helped Savvin set up a fence (fence) in the icy water, together they dug potatoes out of the snow... Natalya washed them in a stream with ice...
All this is true. But was the situation really that extreme for the Lykovs when they had to work in snow or cold water? With us, they easily walked barefoot in the snow for a long time without any health consequences. No, the main reason for their death was not the usual cooling of the body, but the fact that shortly before the illness, the family again visited the geologists in the village. When they returned, they all fell ill: cough, runny nose, sore throat, chills. But I had to dig potatoes. And in general, what was usual for them turned into a fatal illness for the three of them, because already sick people were exposed to hypothermia.”
And Karp Iosifovich, Professor Nazarov believes, contrary to V. Peskov’s statements, did not die from senile decrepitude, although he was indeed already 87 years old. “Suspecting that a doctor with 30 years of experience could have overlooked the patient’s age, Vasily Mikhailovich leaves out of the brackets of his reasoning the fact that Agafya was the first to fall ill after her next visit to the village. When she returned, she fell ill. The next day Karp Iosifovich fell ill. And a week later he died. Agafya was ill for another month. But before I left, I left her the pills and explained how to take them. Fortunately, she accurately identified herself in this situation. Karp Iosifovich remained true to himself and refused pills.
Now about his decrepitude. Just two years earlier he had broken his leg. I arrived when he had not moved for a long time and lost heart. Krasnoyarsk traumatologist V. Timoshkov and I applied conservative treatment and applied plaster. But, to be honest, I didn’t expect him to pull through. And a month later, in response to my question about his well-being, Karp Iosifovich took his stick and left the hut. Moreover, he began to work around the house. It was a real miracle. An 85-year-old man has a fused meniscus, at a time when this happens extremely rarely even in young people, and he has to undergo surgery. In a word, the old man still had a huge reserve of vitality..."
V. Peskov also argued that the Lykovs could have been ruined by the “long-term stress” that they experienced due to the fact that the meeting with people allegedly gave rise to many painful questions, disputes and strife in the family. “Talking about this,” says Professor Nazarov, “Vasily Mikhailovich repeats the well-known truth that stress can depress the immune system... But he forgets that stress cannot be long-lasting, and by the time the three Lykovs died, their acquaintance with geologists it has been going on for three years already. There are no facts indicating that this acquaintance produced a revolution in the minds of family members. But there is irrefutable data from Agafya’s blood test, confirming that there was no immunity, so there was nothing to suppress stress.”
Let us note, by the way, that I.P. Nazarov, taking into account the specifics of his patients, prepared Agafya and her father for the first blood test for five years (!), and when he took it, he stayed with the Lykovs for another two days to monitor their condition.
It is difficult for a modern person to understand the motives for a concentrated, suffering life, a life of faith. We judge everything hastily, with labels, like judges to everyone. One of the journalists even calculated how little the Lykovs saw in life, having settled in a patch of only 15x15 kilometers in the taiga; that they didn’t even know that Antarctica existed, that the Earth was a ball. By the way, Christ also did not know that the Earth is round and that Antarctica exists, but no one blames him for this, realizing that this is not the knowledge that is vitally necessary for man. But the Lykovs knew better than us what is absolutely necessary in life. Dostoevsky said that only suffering can teach a person something - this is the main law of life on Earth. The Lykovs' life turned out in such a way that they drank this cup in full, accepting the fatal law as their personal destiny.
The eminent journalist reproached the Lykovs for not even knowing that “besides Nikon and Peter I, it turns out that great people Galileo, Columbus, Lenin lived on earth...” He even allowed himself to claim that because of this that “they didn’t know this, the Lykovs had only a grain of their sense of homeland.”
But the Lykovs didn’t have to love the Motherland like a book, in words, as we do, because they were part of the Motherland itself and never separated it, like their faith, from themselves. The homeland was inside the Lykovs, which means it was always with them and them.
Vasily Mikhailovich Peskov writes about some kind of “dead end” in the fate of the taiga hermits the Lykovs. Although how can a person be at a dead end if he lives and does everything according to his conscience? And a person will never meet a dead end if he lives according to his conscience, without looking at anyone, without trying to get along, to please... On the contrary, his personality reveals itself and blossoms. Look at Agafya's face - this is the face of a happy, balanced, spiritualized person who is in harmony with the foundations of his secluded taiga life. O. Mandelstam concluded that “double existence is an absolute fact of our life.” Having heard the story about the Lykovs, the reader has the right to doubt: yes, the fact is very common, but not absolute. And the history of the Lykovs proves this to us. Mandelstam learned this and came to terms with it, we and our civilization know this and come to terms with it, but the Lykovs found out and did not come to terms with it. They didn’t want to live against their conscience, they didn’t want to live a double life. But adherence to truth and conscience is true spirituality, which we all seem to worry about out loud. “The Lykovs left to live on their report, they went to the feat of piety,” says Lev Cherepanov, and it’s hard to disagree with him.
We see in the Lykovs traits of genuine Russianness, what has always made Russians Russian and what we all lack now: the desire for truth, the desire for freedom, for the free expression of our spirit. When Agafya was invited to live with relatives in the mountainous Shoria, she said: “There is no desert in Kilensk, there cannot be extensive life there.” And again: “It’s no good to turn back from a good deed.”
What real conclusion can we draw from everything that happened? Having thoughtlessly invaded a reality we did not understand, we destroyed it. Normal contact with the “aliens of the taiga” did not take place - the disastrous results are obvious.
May this serve us all as a cruel lesson for future meetings.
Maybe with real aliens...
The Lykovs' hut. They lived in it for thirty-two years.
Magical Altai
Mountain Altai is a magical country. Among esotericists around the world, this region is known for its amazing energy, “places of power,” and fantastic opportunities for communication with inanimate nature. This is where the Old Believers strove. They still live here today. It turns out that the famous hermit Agafya Lykova is not at all as lonely as many are accustomed to think.
The expedition of the television company "Unknown Planet" visited the villages of Old Believers, who even today live without electricity, money, or documents. Sometimes new wanderers come to them from big cities for eternal settlement - in search of another meaning in life, in an attempt to find new faith. Listen to these people, they are rarely so frank with the laity. Altai is considered one of the oldest places of human settlement. Strange stone structures (megaliths) with mysterious inscriptions and drawings are found here. They are as old as the shamanic traditions of Altai. Watch how modern keepers of secret teachings perform rituals today, listen to the magical throat singing.
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