Russian family lived alone in the Siberian wilderness for 40 years (2013)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this-russian-family-lived-alone-in-the-siberian-wilderness-for-40-years-unaware-of-world-war-ii-or-the-moon-landing-7354256/

by baxtr • 2 years ago

166 136 2 years ago

smithsonianmag.com

skzv• 2 years ago

The Vice documentary mentioned in the article is really great [0].

Best of luck to Agafia.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2AYafET68

hnthrowaway03282• 2 years ago

I wish I could do that in Canada. Not totally isolated but a few kms from a main road with a chalet and something. Solar for power, Starlink for network and I can die in that chalet.

But building and maintaining are going to be hell because I know exactly zero about those.

cgh2• 2 years ago

Literally the only things stopping you from doing this are money (to buy a rural lot somewhere, tools, a truck and so forth) and time. You can learn most of your skills with YouTube and practise, not kidding. Thanks to YouTube, we renovated a borderline crappy house, built outbuildings, landscaped, etc. with essentially no construction experience. I am still kind of amazed by this.

Loughla2• 2 years ago

I'll add, there are also databases of home improvement projects available through your local library. That way you can fully evaluate the YouTube video to see if the creator is wildly unsafe or something.

hnthrowaway03282• 2 years ago

Yeah, it's half money and time and half kid.

A more realistic option is to just buy a chalet in a relatively remote area so I have access to some sort of plumbing system. But then again it's tough to find a stable remote job and a good school for my kid. (Again money can probably solve both)

Cthulhu_3• 2 years ago

I know someone from the internet that ended her 20 year relationship and went with someone else that she's known for at least that long too, they decided to buy a plot of land and build their homestead from scratch. They're struggling though because everything costs a lot of money and time, like buying an old bulldozer that of course needs a lot of repairs and work. They were hoping to have a cabin up before winter but due to all the setbacks they're forced to rent something for over the winter now. They also have a baby on the way.

idgi, I kinda get the drive for homesteading, but at the same time it's a luxury lifestyle choice. That said, they chose the hard way and build their own stuff from locally sourced wood, instead of buying a plot of land with a cabin already on it.

Personally I wouldn't mind retreating into the woods for a couple of weeks, but at the moment I like home comforts too.

hindsightbias• 2 years ago

Watch this series, you'll be able to do anything.

https://youtu.be/fCcLhdLaxnM?si=fy4D20GyFenA4cqo

But it's a 100X easier to just buy the materials.

instig007• 2 years ago

It was fascinating to discover a similar channel from (presumably, or at least, as he claims to be) a russian lawyer who does this as a hobby, and very successfuly so: https://www.youtube.com/@adekvate/videos

scottyah2• 2 years ago

In Norway they have a bunch of chalets like that, the key is to build and stock them in the summer. Don't pull a Chris McCandless, but plenty of people have survived the arctic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy-4NxJRxNQ

0823498723498723• 2 years ago

It boggles my mind that people don't read Chris McCandless' story and notice that in his previous adventures, he'd also fucked up, but always got bailed out by other people. Then he got the brilliant idea of going someplace where there were no other people...

grecy6• 2 years ago

I know plenty of people doing exactly that in the Yukon. Head up and spend a few years in Whitehorse. You’ll meet good people who can teach you what you need to know. Changed my life for sure.

aziaziazi4• 2 years ago

Did you write more about it somewhere ?

alexey-salmin• 2 years ago

When in recalling the “first world war” with Karp Osipovich the geologists engaged him in conversation about the last one, he shook his head: “What is this, a second time, and always the Germans. A curse on Peter. He flirted with them. That is so.”

It's almost the "which one, first or second?" joke but IRL

cgh2• 2 years ago

"Always the Germans". My Dutch friends will laugh pretty hard at this. It fits in with yelling "Hey, where's my bike?" at German tourists (the Nazis confiscated Dutch bicycles in WW2 to limit movement) and referring to people from the eastern part of the country as "spare Germans".

IncreasePosts• 2 years ago

At a certain point, we gotta say "Hey, Germany, you don't get to be a country no more, on account of you keep attacking THE WORLD"

usrnm• 2 years ago

Yeah, but Peter actually flirted with the Dutch, not Germans. Nobody just sees any difference ;)

idunnoman1222• 2 years ago

All the kids died of pneumonia caught from the visiting geologist. What a cute story.

kzrdude• 2 years ago

Well. I wonder if the new gift of salt in their diet contributed to kidney failure.

scns• 2 years ago

The most important thing the Beduins take to the desert is?

Salt

pirate787• 2 years ago

I read the salt killed them in another telling a couple years ago.

nighthawk454• 2 years ago

In the fall of 1981, three of the four children followed their mother to the grave. According to Peskov, their deaths were not, as some have speculated, the result of exposure to diseases to which they had no immunity. Both Savin and Natalia suffered from kidney failure, most likely a result of their harsh diet. But Dmitry died of pneumonia, which might have begun as an infection he acquired from his new friends.

madarco• 2 years ago

I'm not sure... several parts of this story seem unbelievable to be honest.

chikenf00t• 2 years ago

What parts seem unbelievable?

tsimionescu2• 2 years ago

I remember watching a documentary about them, without much context. The old lady who is still living alone out there was talking a lot about how the Patriarch (an Orthodox equivalent of the Pope, more or less) corrupted their old faith, and she was cursing his name a lot. By the way she was speaking, I thought she was talking about some events that must have happened during her father's life, maybe his childhood - I assumed she was upset about some communist era Patriarch who probably was too friendly with the regime or something.

Looking it up later, I realized she was an Old Believer, and the Patriarch she was cursing was in fact Nikon, who corrupted their faith in 1652... I found it deeply fascinating how powerful and alive this almost 400 year old grudge was to this woman.

kgeist3• 2 years ago

It's basically Old Believers' entire identity - opposition to the official church.

Muromec2• 2 years ago

Not to the official church, but to Ukrainians bringing it into the alignment with the common Orthodox canon at the time. What happened isn’t purely lithurgical change, they imported a lot of monks who can read canonical greek texts with them.

It’s a repeated historical pattern — top down reforms brought by “enlightened” leader to make the country more European, more Orthodox or more communist.

This was even before Peter cutting beards of the entrenched nobility and was sold on the orthodoxy, autocracy and nationalism thing by the usual suspects.

JacobThreeThree• 2 years ago

Give them some smartphones with social media and it'll be forgotten in a generation.

Dr_Birdbrain• 2 years ago

Or, it will be amplified, and will become the basis of a religious-nationalist movement.

dgfitz2• 2 years ago

You joke, the North Koreans fighting for Russia in Ukraine are fascinated with the internet.

For the downvoters: https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/north-korean-soldier...

Mistletoe• 2 years ago

You can see how oral knowledge and traditions could stay strong over many generations in human history.

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

Go to the "Main alterations" segment if anyone wants more info on the changes that angered them so much still after 400 years. Humans can be so ridiculous.

dingdingdang• 2 years ago

This story sure has done the rounds. I like it both in the particular and thematically speaking so perhaps there's a good non-tragic variation* on it out there to be found..?

tetrisgm2• 2 years ago

Those poor people missed TikTok, Tiger King, and all the other amazing things we have to offer.

Glad they lived what they wanted

ivan_gammel3• 2 years ago

When I was 6 years old I was confused just like you about the age of things.

I mean, they were discovered before the Digital Age and missed only The Beatles and TV.

tetrisgm2• 2 years ago

I suppose the lazy ad hominem could be met with: and to this day, you are confused by things like sarcasm.

Have a great day

drdaeman2• 2 years ago

My first thought was rather that they missed modern medicine, balanced diet and even basic kitchen utensils. Not some entertainment.

And I'm not even sure they truly wanted to live that way. I'm no psychologist, but it reads like they were severely traumatized by their religious zeal. While I respect their agency, I suspect their behavior was much less voluntary than they believed.

I don't know how I should feel about it, but I'm not glad they had to suffer, even if it was voluntary (or "voluntary"). It's so fucked up. The only thing I'm sure is that [unregulated] religion can sometimes be such a memetic cancer.

It's somewhat comparable to those modern-day homeless that are scraping by on the streets but refuse to do anything about it. (I don't really know what to make of those people either.)

beedeebeedee3• 2 years ago

I'm no psychologist, but it reads like they were severely traumatized by their religious zeal.

You seem to have missed the part where they were fleeing the bolsheviks

It's somewhat comparable to those modern-day homeless that are scraping by on the streets but refuse to do anything about it.

You're missing some things there too

fuzztester2• 2 years ago

Reading the post title, the film Dersu Uzala by Akira Kurosawa comes to mind.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dersu_Uzala_(1975_film)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Kurosawa

sampo• 2 years ago

The book is even better.

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

fuzztester2• 2 years ago

didn't know, thanks.

sad ending of the real life guy. this article - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dersu_Uzala - says he was murdered, maybe for the new rifle that Arsenyev gave him as a parting gift when Dersu realized he could not live in the city and decided to returned to the woods.

renewiltord• 2 years ago

Well, that brought up a memory from childhood. My parents borrowed this on a tape and my brother and I would go about calling the Sun “a very great man” and the Moon “another great man” because that’s what the character says about them.

kunley• 2 years ago

[flagged]

the5avage• 2 years ago

I was always fascinated by siberia. Pretty sad that visiting it will be off the table for many years now.

gonzo• 2 years ago

IDK. The results of the US election could change this, too.

ivan_gammel3• 2 years ago

It's relatively safe for foreigners to visit Russia at the moment. Just stay away from military objects and rare public protests, and don't do generally stupid things, like praising Ukraine in a restaurant full of people (you may get both support and a visit by police). You will also need a lot of cash.

fennecbutt• 2 years ago

That does not sound safe at all, it's irresponsible of you to suggest such a thing, imo.

orenlindsey• 2 years ago

This is their homesite on Google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/CkPRPxPuQuCg3q749

Seems to be sort of a tourist attraction now. The nearest road is about 55 miles away according to the measuring tool on google maps. There's several nature preserves/parks in the area that protect the site. I guess people hike to it now.

sleroq• 2 years ago

"No wheelchair accessible entrance" sign killed me.

aojdwhsd• 2 years ago

This reminds me of a two-part documentary about a family living in the Russian far east: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BGo1vMdHEo

pj_mukh• 2 years ago

“You can’t breathe. There are cars everywhere. There is no clean air. Each car that passes by leaves so many toxins in the air. You have no other option but to stay at home.”

Mmm, stay in a forest for 40 years and come back out a New Urbanist. Typical.

aziaziazi4• 2 years ago

Haha not bad but that would be more funny to me if I didn’t experience it every Holliday back. One week in the mountains is enough to reset my tolerance and get bitter tickle as soon as back in urban home.

grecy6• 2 years ago

I’m walking the Camino in Spain. After A single day out in the wilderness the smell of traffic is terrible and very noticeable.

Flying from my home in the Yukon to LAX is like landing in Mordor. The air is disgusting, the brown smudge, etc.

kregasaurusrex• 2 years ago

How the family found out about satellites is very interesting to me- such an unexplained phenomena wouldn't make sense to some groups (ie, flat-earthers deny their existence altogether), where they would have observed Sputnik zooming across the sky while only being visible at dawn and dusk. With such perfect recurrence the Lykovs would have been able to deduce that the object followed ordinary orbital mechanics against the backdrop of the celestial cosmos rather than being a supernatural object, especially that Sputnik was only in the sky for a couple months in 1957. Later ones would have have likely indicated they were a product of man; I'd personally ascribe it to being supernatural in origin!

dmitry-vsl• 2 years ago

I think this is a fabrication by the journalist. Overall, it seems to me that there was an ideological agenda behind this story. In the USSR, no topic could cause a stir in major media outlets without an ideological directive.

HarryHirsch• 2 years ago

The family would have heard about airplanes, they were from Perm Oblast, which isn't exactly remote. It isn't exactly a big leap to think that what they were seeing was the lights of airplanes. Ships carry lights for safe navigation, and if you fly at night you also carry lights for safety.

croisillon• 2 years ago

i sometimes wonder what it was to live in early human times and make sense of everything: time, phenomena etc. i am not religious but i guess back then i would have ascribed anything to gods

_def• 2 years ago

You would need to come up with the concept of gods first though

grecy6• 2 years ago

Spending a few months in Iceland it was really easy to see why they have so many gods and mythical beings in their history. The place is MAGICAL.

TaurenHunter• 2 years ago

That reminds me of the documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcHbZZPce_ZMUuYr5u6sx...

harikb• 2 years ago

Well... Not that being connected to the world has helped others...

According to Google Trends, searches for "Did Joe Biden drop out" started spiking around 6 a.m. on election day and continued to rise over the course of the day until reaching its peak at midnight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS4vphcHGmo

penguin_booze• 2 years ago

As long as I internet, just tell me where to sign up.

timonoko2• 2 years ago

Nobody ever mentions this area was wilderness, because the invading Muscovites totally decimated indigenous population known as Hakassi.

For various reason, the Finnish version of wikipedia is more informative. https://fi-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Hakassit?_x_t...

cpursley9• 2 years ago

I hate to tell you this, but most of the major powers did all sorts horrible things during that time period. Especially my people group, who were arguable the most effective at it.

And fwiw, the late Soviets tried to course correct regarding ethnic groups. My wife (half ethnic Komi, another Finnish group), was taught that language in school.

Don’t get me wrong, the Finish and Finnish ethnic groups (and many others) got a raw deal, but it’s no reason for the blanket Russophobia that we see on hn so often.

timonoko2• 2 years ago

Ukrainian what?

"Noko" was a clan and castle year 1000 in Western Finland.

tim3335• 2 years ago

blanket Russophobia

Sure most major powers did horrible things in the past. But now? How many other major powers are launching bloody invasions of their neighbors?

mindslight4• 2 years ago

What is the origin of this word "Russophobia" ? It seems like a recent invention trying to take advantage of the general western progressive concern of xenophobia to encourage weakness, similar to how their propagandists have re-purposed and abused general anti-war sentiment stemming from the Iraq debacle.

But I'm curious to know if it's even older and was perhaps used as some kind of powertalk during Soviet times when a new area was being subjugated. "You just don't want us here because you're scared of us".

tim3335• 2 years ago

Your link has few details of indigenous population decimation. The "Indigenous peoples of Siberia" Wikipedia link seems to have more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_Siberia

riehwvfbk• 2 years ago

Your link does not say what your summary says. The Wiki article just says the Hakassi joined the Soviet revolution (presumably happily) and moved from nomadic to modern livelihoods. No mention of a massacre.

Now, I am not saying that a massacre didn't happen. But it also didn't happen they way you are implying. This wasn't "the Communists oppressed poor tribesmen" but rather "imperialistic 18th century power steamrolls some natives". I can name a few more imperialistic powers of the period that did the same or worse.

Also, the Hakassi culture is descended from Mongols, not Finns. Why are they more Finnish than Russian? That's right, because they are not. In fact, Hakassia is nowhere near Finland (it's in the middle of Siberia), but linking to the Finnish Wikipedia makes it seem like another little European country attacked by the Ogre Horde.

Lastly, you say that tiny Finnish stub article has more details than the Russian Wikipedia, and that is simply not true. In addition to the main article, there is a link from it specifically to a standalone article about Hakassia's inclusion into Russia, which is described as "painful": https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%.... The events are covered in great detail starting with the 1600s.

Does this explain why your comment is mostly Russophobia?

_dp9d• 2 years ago

Every time this story comes up I ask.

How did they light fire, and what vessels did they use to boil water?

I ask this after years of adventure is the Yukon wilderness, where we play the game “if the canoe flipped and we lost everything, could we survive?”. Often the answer is “not unless we luckily rescue our rifles or lighters or gps beacon. Maybe we could walk out in a month. Maybe.

Tor32• 2 years ago

I'm not sure what the answer is, but for the record whenever I spent a few weeks in the mountains as a younger person, I never brought rifles, lighters, or gps beacons (or any other electronics). I did have matches though, in a waterproof bag. But I also had steel and flint. Knife. And a fishing rod. In fact the most useful modern society thing I brought would be soap.. if you have it you don't think much about it, if you don't then you realize how very useful it is.

grecy6• 2 years ago

I’m impressed!

What did you boil water in?

Just eat with your fingers?

aziaziazi4• 2 years ago

Boil water

They had a couple iron pots that eventually rusted after years. Then they made some new ones with wood but that wasn’t convenient because wood burn. Then at year+40 geologists came and bring later (soon?) new one. And grain, blanquet, shirts.

I recommend Vice article, it’s more detailed and respectful in my opinion.

Russian family lived alone in the Siberian wilderness for 40 years (2013)

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