Lykov

This article covers the Lykov family, who settled in the Siberian taiga. For further meanings see Lykow (disambiguation) .

Coordinates: 51 ° 27 '39.11 "  N , 88 ° 25' 37.59"  O

Lykow ( Russian Лыков ) is the surname of a family of six who withdrew to the Siberian taiga in 1936 and lived there in isolation and religiously motivated without any external contact until they were discovered by chance in 1978 by a team of geologists .

Historical background

Triggered by the church reform of Patriarch Nikon in 1653, religious disputes ignited in Russia, with a split within the Russian Orthodox Church between 1666 and 1667 . This is how the so-called Old Believers came into being . Within this movement the religious grouping of the “priestless” was formed, who were convinced that the Last Judgment would soon arrive . In the radical reforms of Peter the Great in particular , they recognized the work of the Antichrist . Many of these “true believers” avoided the uninhabited regions of Russia in order to escape the high tax burden and other obligations of the state, which is regarded as godless. Over the centuries, members of this community have been herded into more inaccessible forest areas. Due to government stalking, the Lykow family withdrew to the upper reaches of the Abakan in the 1930s and was forgotten there - 250 kilometers from the nearest human settlement. In 1978 the family was discovered by a team of geologists. The fate of the family became known through reports in Komsomolskaya Pravda .

The family and their living conditions

Lykov's household items, exhibited in the Krasnoyarsk Literature Museum

At the time of their discovery, the family consisted of the father, Karp Ossipowitsch Lykow, the sons Sawwin (45) and Dimitri (36) and the daughters Natalja (42) and Agafja (34). The mother, Akulina Karpovna b. Daibowa, presumably died of starvation in 1961. The local historian Nikolai Ustinowitsch Schuravljow described the living conditions as follows:

“You make a fire with a sharpening steel, you generate light with pine shavings… You live like in the time before Peter the First, mixed with a few splashes of the Stone Age. In summer they walk barefoot, in winter they wear birch bark shoes. They don't use salt, they don't know bread. They have preserved the language. "

- Vasily Peskow: The forgotten of the taiga

The family rejected modern products. In 1981 the three oldest children died; 1988 the father at the age of 87. A little later, an alleged wedding of the youngest daughter Agafja, who was left behind, was reported, but this turned out to be a false report. After the geological settlement was abandoned 15 kilometers downstream from the hut and helicopter flights became more expensive as a result of the political change, contact with Agafja also decreased.

Several films and reports about Agafia Lykova have been produced in recent years. In November 2003 she gave an interview on the Russian TV channel ORT .

She is also in regular letter contact with the governor of Kemerovo , who supports her with utensils such as tools, fishing nets and blankets, as well as food and medicine. In February 2009, she sent a letter to the governors of the neighboring areas via the newspaper Krasnoyarsky Rabochi, asking them to help with the household.

In the summer of 2010, the German author Jens Mühling visited the hermit in the taiga. He describes the encounter in his book My Russian Adventure . In it Agafja declares that she never wants to give up her self-chosen exile, but rather "to die in the taiga".

In 2015, the British director Rebecca Marshall started a documentary about Agafja Lykowa under the title “The forest in me”.

After Agafia Lykova sent an emergency call via satellite phone, she was flown to a hospital in Tashtagol on January 16, 2016 . She had complained of severe pain in her legs, probably due to osteochondrosis dissecans .

literature

• Wassili Peskow: The forgotten of the taiga: the incredible story of a Siberian family beyond civilization . Goldmann, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-442-12637-1 .
• Jens Mühling: My Russian adventure. In search of the real Russian soul . Dumont Buchverlag, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-8321-9589-2 .

Web links

• Article about the Lykow family in Die Wochenzeitung
• Linguistic-ethnographic expedition to the Jerinat River to Agafja Karpowna Lykowa 2003 of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Museum of Local History (Russian)
• Message about Agafja's letter in February 2009 on newsru.com (Russian)
• Komsomolskaya Pravda online article on Agafya from March 20, 2009
• Surviving in the Siberian Wilderness for 70 Years on YouTube
• Jens Mühling: Siberian Hermits Alone in the Taiga (abridged excerpt from My Russian Adventure )
• Tomas Avenarius : The woman who Corona doesn't know. In: SonntagsZeitung , May 31, 2020, p. 12.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Долгий путь до Ерината. (No longer available online.) In: Красноярский рабочий. August 26, 2009, formerly in the original ; Retrieved February 25, 2013 (Russian).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
2. ↑ Jens Mühling: My Russian Adventure, Dumont Buchverlag, Cologne 2012, p. 347
3. ↑ Siberia: Woman Who Lived Her Entire Life in Wilderness Airlifted to Hospital. In: Sostre News. January 16, 2015, accessed February 29, 2016 .