A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013)

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/?no-ist

by betolink • 10 years ago

279 83 10 years ago

smithsonianmag.com

aresant• 10 years ago

Vice did a fun piece on this family a few years back that - on location - captures the environment they survived in ->

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68

rdtsc2• 10 years ago

Thanks for sharing. Just watched it very interesting.

It was nostalgic seeing the old prayer book in Slavonic, with pages almost brown from being leafed through and used daily. I remembered by grandfather's books, they used to be like that. He tried to teach me some Slavonic, remember at least knowing the alphabet enough to read the words.

Then I like how Agafia explains what it is like to listen to the news about the outside world. The man who came to live next "door" (their relationship seems ...complicated) has a radio, and they listen to it sometimes. She mentions the impression she gets about the outside world from it, just terrible things: people killing each other, mining accidents, terrorist acts. It is as if aliens captured some of our broadcasts and tried to infer what we are like. Not that we are doing stellar job, but the news would make it seem like we are failing even more.

The other interesting comment was from the park ranger how wilderness cleanses people. Nobody is out that far stealing or committing crimes. That far out people are happy to see each other, help each other, hunters in their cabins leave food, matches and firewood.

Had to laugh of course, at her using the mangled test missile crashed nearby to scare the bears away, by hitting it with a stick. It is hard to fathom a more complete mix of Russian stereotypes in one single image: feisty old woman with a stick, wearing a head scarf, bears, soviet military artifact, and Siberia.

rdtsc2• 10 years ago

(can't edit post so I'll reply to it instead)

It looks like Yerofei the man next door has died last year and so Agafia is all alone again.

http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0230-friend-to-r...

danielmorozoff2• 10 years ago

If anyone is interested, the Lykovs were part of a group of 'Old Believers' (староверы) a sect of the Russian orthodox church. The primary reason many people who shared their faith fled major cities was because of Communist religious purges (an attempt to solve the problem of 'Religion is the opium of the people')

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Believers

ZanyProgrammer• 10 years ago

Yep and in an irony of history, they, not the Metropolitan of Moscow, were actually being better at adhering to tradition.

shmerl• 10 years ago

They have a lot of interesting traditions, including meditation techniques not known to "Metropolitan of Moscow".

Mikeb852• 10 years ago

What tradition do they hold to that has any relevance to Orthodox Christianity? It's not as if the MP (Moscow Patriarchate) is particularly modern - apart from not forcing their lay adherents to abandon modern technology. There are still hermits and monks in the canonical Orthodox Churches - on Mt. Athos, at Valaam, Mt. Sinai, etc... Canonical Orthodox churches still reject most of the shit that the Anglicans and Catholics have accepted. But they cross themselves with 3 fingers instead of 2...

Mikeb852• 10 years ago

The primary reason many people who shared their faith fled major cities was because of Communist religious purges

No, it's because all the Orthodox that existed in cities realised the schism was stupid. Most of the 'Old Believers' moved to whatever remote part of Siberia or Alaska long before the communists existed. And those that do still exist, live in a timewarp, and are more akin to a cult than an Orthodox community. Keep in mind the schism happened in 1666 - nearly 3 centuries before the communist revolution.

danielmorozoff2• 10 years ago

Though the schism happened long before the Lykovs, the communist party led a strong campaign to destroy christian organizations in the early 20s-40s (right around the time the lykovs left).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR_anti-religious_campaign_(...

Here is another example of a community of old believers in Alaska (1968) with an article in the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/a-17th-c...

rusanu4• 10 years ago

The Danube delta has a fairly large population of old believers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipovans

DominikR• 10 years ago

The persecution actually began under Peter the Great. By the time Communists came into power most old believers had already fled.

The main reason for persecution was the old believers distrust of state power. They didn't accept rule by it and they didn't take any part in it. They were similar to the Amish people in the US.

narrator• 10 years ago

Primitive Technology is really interesting. This guy is super good at it : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA

He's trying to get iron smelted right now, but that's really hard. It seems the problem the Lykovs ran into was that their metal items rusted after a while and they couldn't repair them. It's really hard to live without pots, and knives.

betolink2• 10 years ago

I'm a fan of these videos! if I get stranded on an Island my only hope is to have enough battery and this guy's videos on a usb drive =)

StavrosK2• 10 years ago

"I'm gonna starve to death, but at least I won't get bored!"

rusanu4• 10 years ago

The first video would be one that would show you how a large battery and a USB drive are not enough for survival, if only you would have something to watch the video on :)

T0T0R0• 10 years ago

The best part about that guy is the total absence of spoken language.

But, then, the source of the iron is also pretty incredible:

  Then I collected orange iron bacteria from 
  the creek (iron oxide), mixed it with charcoal 
  powder (carbon to reduce oxide to metal) and 
  wood ash (flux to lower the melting point) and 
  formed it into a cylindrical brick. I filled 
  the furnace with charcoal, put the ore brick in 
  and commenced firing. The ore brick melted and 
  produced slag with tiny, 1mm sized specs of iron 
  through it. My intent was not so much to make 
  iron but to show that the furnace can reach a 
  fairly high temperature using this blower.

shostack• 10 years ago

The really impressive feat is how humanity figured that out to begin with.

13of40• 10 years ago

Sometimes you can find it just lying around on the ground:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2909898/Befor...

rusanu4• 10 years ago

Bog iron [0] production was the predominant way of smelting iron before technology advanced to the point of being able to smelt iron ores. Iron Production in the Viking Age [1] has a really nice description and pictures of the process. This kind of smelting can be done with a small bloomery [2] and the resulted tiny iron specs result is called sponge iron. I wish Dwarf Fortress would implement this chain for environs that lack proper iron ores :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_iron

[1] http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomery

tmptmp• 10 years ago

A very humbling experience, great videos and great efforts.

I wonder, how many years (centuries) might have gone into inventing, discovering and perfecting even this "primitive" technology.

Not to undermine his efforts, but this guy could do all this "so fast" mostly because he is working in a rather comfortable and secure environment of modern and more civilized times, whereas the real primitives had to look out for predators (lions, tigers, etc), for other human attackers and so on.

Kudos to this guy and more kudos to all those anonymous primitive hackers who created such an incredible technology.

Lesson to take: I should stop complaining about those little inconveniences and discomforts I encounter in my modern life.

duaneb3• 10 years ago

the real primitives had to look out for predators (lions, tigers, etc), for other human attackers and so on.

I'm not sure what you're imagining pre-history to be like, but humans are generally the top of every food chain. It's also very rarely worth it to attack another human without desired resources. The big risk in Eurasia would be wolves, who would have to be very hungry. Non-pack animals usually are a threat when sleeping or to children, not an awake adult who can, well, walk away or climb a tree.

Point is: you're much more likely to die from starvation, infection, or disease while pursuing technology. Time was a major issue: any time not spent feeding yourself had better help you feed yourself later.

grecy2• 10 years ago

I live in the Yukon - when we are out Moose hunting in the fall we often wonder if we could survive the winter if we flipped our canoe with nothing more than we have with us.

Every time this article comes up, I have two questions I've never found a satisfactory answer to:

1. How did they light fires?

2. How did they cook and boil water? From experience pots and pans fail after much less than 40 years.

antisthenes• 10 years ago

For 1. I'd assume they kept the fire going, since the need to cook and boil food was constant.

I've read somewhere as a kid that prehistoric people who discovered fire kept it going round the clock since it was more convenient to always have a light source and warmth on demand and wood is generally plentiful enough.

paulvs• 10 years ago

I remember reading this a while back on HN, for those interested in the discussion, here's the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523

known• 10 years ago

Your Beliefs Doesn't Make You A Better Person; Your Behavior Does;

jedmeyers• 10 years ago

I remember my uncle telling me about them when I was growing up in the 90s. He was an officer responsible for the environmental impact assessment of the Baikonur rocket launches and visited Lykovs a couple of times. They lived really close to the area where Proton rocket boosters are supposed to fall down. Couple of years ago I found out that V. Peskov even mentioned my uncle in his 'Lost in the Taiga' book about the Lykov family.

anexprogrammer• 10 years ago

A fascinating story from 2013.

There was an interesting short follow up from the Siberian Times a year after the Smithsonian piece - the last surviving member was seeking help, or maybe just tiring of isolation, in her 70s.

http://www.businessinsider.com/agafya-lykova-asks-for-help-2...

pmoriarty• 10 years ago

  "I am all alone, my years are big, my health is bad, I keep
  getting ill," Agafia said in the letter cited by the
  newspaper. "There is a lump on my right breast, and my strength
  is going. There is a need for a person, a helper, assuming
  there are kind people in the world, as the world has always had
  kind people."

  The thought of the elderly Agafia facing such a harsh winter is
  tough. But not all locals are sympathetic -- she has been
  offered a winter home in a local village before, the Siberian
  Times reports, but has refused it.

  "She is being a little cunning," Vladimir Pavlovsky, editor of
  the local paper Krasnoyarskiy Rabochiy, told the Siberian
  Times. "She has no hunger. She wants to attract more
  attention. She has enough cereals, bags of them lie on her
  porch, and everywhere. And she has enough potatoes."

That editor sounds a bit heartless. She's clearly gone about as far as anyone can be expected to go, living virtually her whole life in isolation, and now she's 70 years old and is having a hard time taking surviving in one of the harshest environments on earth.

After a while, your body starts to break down, and some cereal and potatoes aren't going to cut it. She needs things like firewood and water. Even simply cooking will eventually be impossible to do when one gets old enough, especially under those primitive conditions.

Besides, she's probably lonely. Many elderly people suffer from depression and take their own lives because of their isolation. How hard can it be to have some sympathy for that?

icebraining• 10 years ago

He probably has less sympathy since "she has been offered a winter home in a local village before (...) but has refused it."

I can understand how much it pains her to leave her home, but seems a bit much to ask some unrelated person to leave theirs to live with her.

andrewvijay2• 10 years ago

Found them gave them pneumonia and killed them.

quakeguy• 10 years ago

Is your comment necessary?

rangibaby• 10 years ago

It's basically the fate of "discovered" people everywhere. Various native groups around the world would probably have beaten off conquistadors etc if it wasn't for the diseases they brought with them.

wyager• 10 years ago

Only one died of pneumonia. Not clear if it was caused by contact with modern people.

fennecfoxen• 10 years ago

It doesn't even need to be contact with "modern" people, just with people.

zhemao• 10 years ago

Only of them died of pneumonia. The scientists tried to save him by taking him to a hospital for modern medical treatment, but he refused.

andrewvijay2• 10 years ago

Yes. It was a joke!

harryjo• 10 years ago

Previous discussion, almost exactly 1 year ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523#10126308

voidz• 10 years ago

almost exactly

Approximately

aws_ls• 10 years ago

Earlier discussion on the same article on HN, few years back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5134023

Edit: On HN, you occasionally see can't forget articles, every once in a while. This is one of those..

unixhero2• 10 years ago

On "Can't forget articles"

I really wish there was a curated Hacker News archive.

I encounter so many new things which are exciting, thought provoking and amazing stuff on HN.

Or if they would extend HN with a Categories section.

harperlee• 10 years ago

You now have the "favorites" function, with which you can publicly mark articles.

Perhaps a rank of the most favorite articles would do that.

205guy• 10 years ago

Another article about this family said they died of kidney failure not because of their harsh diet, but because of the reintroduction of salt [citation needed]. Similar but not as unavoidable. Then again they craved salt but it's plausible their body couldn't handle it.

jjallen• 10 years ago

Another interesting place, though not nearly as isolated, is Lukomir, Bosnia. It was remote enough during the Yugoslavian war that the war never really made it up there (though there was little reason to probably).

You have to drive an hour and a half from Sarajevo to a small village. From there, Lukomir is another six miles up into the hills at ~2,500 meters elevation. You can now drive up there, but I strongly recommend hiking: you will feel like the IceMan walking around Europe 5,000 years ago, at least I did.

The people there live very simple lives, as you can imagine: shepherding livestock during the day in the surrounding hills, mostly sheep, for instance.

On top of this is the fact that the village is on the edge of a canyon, so has spectacular views from a cliff next to it.

If you're ever in Sarajevo you should check Lukomir out!

unixhero2• 10 years ago

Cool! Thanks for the tip!

oblio• 10 years ago

If you want remote experiences in Europe, check out Apuseni or Maramures in Romania. Entire remote regions with people mostly living like hundreds of years ago.

Apuseni: http://szelmob.com/viatori/images/Blog/transylvania/Apuseni-...

Maramures: http://romaniatourism.com/images/maramures/maramures-barsana...

theklub• 10 years ago

When I was little I remember thinking everyone in Europe lived like that for some reason.

paganel• 10 years ago

+1 for this (even though as a Romanian I'm a little biased). For comparison, I got to visit Switzerland this summer. One of the most beautiful places I've visited, the mountains looked gorgeous, but I was continuously feeling that vibe that it was all a man-made park.

madaxe_again• 10 years ago

Or pretty much all of Moldova outside of Chisinau. Cobbled streets, gas lighting, donkey carts. I doubt it's changed much in the past four years.

ddalex• 10 years ago

Yes, please visit Transylvania. The vampires need fresh blood.

Inthenameofmine• 10 years ago

Reminds me of Theth in Northern Albania. The villagers there apparently never came in touch with the Ottomans for 500 years.

crocal• 10 years ago

Great story. It somehow makes me think of the honored forest people from "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind".

aries1980• 10 years ago

This reminds me to the Hun village in the Swiss Alps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anniviers or http://archive.worldhistoria.com/the-hunnic-swiss-valley-val...

Because the difficult landscape, these villages were isolated and kept the culture and some of the language. Funny to see the motifs on my mom's table cloths or the ornaments on my far relatives' main gatein Transylvania are exactly the same.

hownottowrite• 10 years ago

Highly recommend Happy People: A Year in the Taiga http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683876/

dikeert• 10 years ago

Well, they teach us in schools about that family, so this is kinda common knowledge in russia

kharms• 10 years ago

The three siblings are believed to have died from pneumonia.

Yerafei expresses doubt, saying "how could they get infected from us if they never took anything? For a long time, they didn't take our water, our food. If anything, Agafia should have gotten sick. Why? Well, I once grabbed her and kissed her."

Kissing facilitates the exchange of microbiota[0] and that exchange can strengthen the immune system. Might be that kiss saved her life.

[0 - Shaping the oral microbiota through intimate kissing](https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186...)

zizzles• 10 years ago

Isolated, but not as isolated as:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island

Forget being unaware of WWII. Try being unaware of what a car or phone or airplane or office building is, let alone the idea of a "world war".

Look how primitive they behave.

https://imgur.com/gallery/tWY1o

Imagine taking one of these tribesman on a tour through Times Square NYC.

stormbrew• 10 years ago

They do not seem unaware of modern technology, from the info on these links. They seem like they reject it.

rizumu• 10 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10125523

samirillian• 10 years ago

Karp seems chill af

ivan78• 10 years ago

Some photos from 2013: http://shpilenok.livejournal.com/193005.html

A Russian Family Was Isolated for 40 Years, Unaware of WWII (2013)

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