Lost in the Taiga, by Vasily Peskov

Lost in the Taiga: One Russian Family's Fifty-Year Struggle for Survival and Religious Freedom in the Siberian Wilderness
By Vasily Peskov
Translated by Marian Schwartz
Doubleday, 1994

A Russian journalist provides a haunting account of the Lykovs, a family of Old Believers, members of a fundamentalist sect, who, in 1932, went to live in the depths of the Siberian Taiga and have survived for more than fifty years apart from the modern world.

Review

Communicants of the Old Believers persuasion--a Russian Orthodox sect dating from the mid-l7th century--the Lykov family lived so removed from the world in the Siberian taiga that only in 1978, when a party of geologists happened upon them, was their self-imposed isolation, going back to the early days of Stalinism, shattered. By the time Peskov, a Moscow journalist, made their acquaintance in 1982 on the first of what would become annual visits, only 37-year-old Agafia and her 81-year-old father Karp were still alive. Karp's sons, 54-year-old Savin and 38-year-old Dmitry, and his 44-year-old daughter Natalia all died in 1981, his wife in 1961. The story of how the Lykovs had provided for themselves, then accommodated to the incursions of the modern age is an amazing, poignant drama that Peskov reconstructs with delicacy and respect. The gift-bearing world that knocked on their door was welcome company, even as Karp and Agafia resisted efforts to return them to materialistic society. They gratefully accepted presents that eased their taxing self-sufficiency, like goats, chickens and proper footwear, but rejected such products as canned food: "We are not allowed that." The Lykovs expressed their thanks by reciprocating with gifts of pine nuts and potatoes. When Agafia journeys to newfound relatives for a month's visit, readers are perplexed with mixed emotions, at once hoping and fearing that she'll be enticed by the conveniences she's introduced to, like train travel, shops, electricity. And we are even more torn when she determines to stay on alone in her taiga fastness after her 87-year-old father dies. – Publishers Weekly, 1994

Review

Russian journalist Peskov here expands his Komsomolskaia Pravda reports of a family of Old Believers-members of a fundamentalist sect that seceded from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century-who moved to the remote Siberian forests in 1932 to escape the modern world. It may be difficult for readers without a background in Russian history to appreciate this book. Though a cursory explanation is given of the Great Schism in the church, additional information about the Old Believers would have been useful. The sequence is problematic, the style can be awkward and repetitive, and using footnotes to clarify the Russian words dispersed throughout the text would have been helpful. Nevertheless, the Lykovs' story is memorable and should appeal to anyone interested in wilderness survival and in lives governed by faith. Although the "discovery" of the Lykovs inspired international interest and assistance, in 1991 the surviving daughter, Agafia, was still determined to remain in the taiga rather than accept invitations to live "in the world." This book was a best seller in France, and film rights have been purchased by Jacques Arnaud. Libraries with Soviet/Russian collections should purchase, and public libraries should consider. -- Donna L. Cole, Library Journal, 1994

Review

For Russians who followed journalist Peskov's visits to the Lykov family from 1982 to 1991, and now for Americans, Lost in the Taiga illuminates both the past and the road not taken. Crowded in cities, we read about the family's decades of isolation in the Siberian wilderness. Surrounded by home appliances, we visit a household where, initially at least, matches were not allowed. Alienated and skeptical, we marvel at the strength of the family's religious faith. For the Lykovs are Old Believers whose fundamentalist Russian Orthodox ancestors left the Ukraine for Siberia's tundra in response to the seventeenth century's Great Schism; the family moved deeper into the Abakan River Valley in the 1930s and 1940s as sectarian differences and disturbing contacts with secular society convinced patriarch Karp Osipovich that salvation could only be found far from the world. Rediscovered by geologists in 1978 and brought to their countrymen's attention by Peskov's reportage, the remaining Lykovs. Karp, in his final years, and younger daughter Agafia, now 50build their fragile relationship with the outside world with thoughtful dignity. Schwartz offers a graceful translation of Peskov's remarkable story, which celebrates the Lykovs' threatened taiga wilderness as well as the powerful individuality of the members of this long-isolated family. -- Mary Carroll, Amazon.com Review

Review

Peskov, a correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda, tells the story of a Russian religious dissident who, in 1932, took his wife into the remote Siberian Taiga and remained there, effectively frozen in time, until the 1990s. In 1978, while flying over the upper reaches of the Abakan River, a group of geologists spot what looks like a garden in the midst of the wilderness. On landing, they find not only a garden but paths, a house, and--looking like a vision from the previous century--an old man dressed in patched sacking, speaking a strange dialect. The man, Karp Lykov, and his family are members of a fundamentalist sect called the Old Believers, who insist that they are not permitted to ``live with the world.'' The men and women live separately in this tiny primitive colony. We see daughter Agafia climb nimbly up pine trees to knock off the nuts for her father; we see the pitch dark house with no lighting. Later, as the Lykovs become slowly acquainted with the surrounding Russian society, we see their first reactions to horses, modern buildings, trains, and a boxing match, which so horrifies Agafia that she flees from it. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this saga is the Old Believers' system of counting time, which they reckon as did people before the time of Peter the Great: by the Psalter and the lunar phases. Given the resistance to modernity among religious fanatics, and given Russia's troubled encounter with modernity and the vastness of the land, Peskov writes, ``it is not hard to imagine many similar retreats cropping up...The taiga has swallowed up many small monasteries, poor huts and grave crosses.'' At the end of his brisk and informative account, Peskov wonders if the Lykovs--who missed the purges, WW II, and all the shake-ups that followed--were happy with their life in the wilderness. ``I think so,'' he concludes. -- Kirkus Review, 1994

Review

In 1978, a team of exploratory geologists in a remote area of Siberia happened upon the existence of the Lykov family: father, 81 at the outset of the story, two sons aged 54 and 38, and two daughters, aged 44 and 37. They lived in complete isolation from civilization in the cold forestland called the taiga.

The subtitle of the book, "One Russian Family's Fifty-year Struggle for Survival and Religious Freedom in the Siberian Wilderness," is a perfect summary. The Lykovs were adherents of the Old Belief, clinging to a strict observance of Christianity predating the eighteenth-century religious schism in Russia. The Lykovs had fled the chaos of Russia - and the world - in the 1920's and had been alone every since. As the historian who met them first recounted to the journalist-author, it was "like something halfway between Peter the Great and the Stone Age!"

They get their fire from a tinderbox. They use a torch for light. They go barefoot in summer and wear birch-bark shoes in winter. They have been living without salt. They don't know bread. ... Recent events are unknown to them. Electricity, radio, and satellites are beyond their imaginations.

Author Peskov offers vivid, often touching, portraits of daily life in his annual visits to the Lykovs over ten years. He chronicles what they grew (potatoes, turnips, carrots) and foraged (acorns and berries), how they clothed themselves in hemp and birch-bark, how they kept their hut in frigid winter, how they related their history in accounts of the past. The details make a fascinating narrative, and the glossy plates of photographs and a couple of maps are very useful.

Some reviewers have wondered what has happened so many years later. Peskov saw the deterioration of the elder Lykov, who died within a season of his last visit; only the elder daughter Agafia was alive at the 1991 publication of the Russian edition of this book. At forty-nine, she had refused to leave. "I shall live as we have always lived," are her departing words to Peskov - and the rest of us. "This," remarks the author, "may be the greatest solitude on the earth today." -- Hermitary, 2002