Important Reports: "Taiga cleanses you."

Minnesotastan of TYWKIWDBI ("Tai-Wiki-Widbee"): evaluates "Agafia's Taiga Life":

"This is a remarkable and captivating video. The narration is modest, descriptive rather than judgmental, and consists primarily of the words of Agafia herself.

The images are awesome in terms of giving insight into a way of life that is absolutely and totally different from mine and your own, but perhaps somewhat like that of our great-grandparents. Find the fullscreen button in the corner of the video and click it. This is well worth your time. Trust me."

He's absolutely correct. It's important to see this.

The full backstory of this amazing film is found at For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of WWII in the Smithsonian Magazine

Under the Soviets, isolated Old Believer communities that had fled to Siberia to escape persecution began to retreat ever further from civilization. During the purges of the 1930s, with Christianity itself under assault, a Communist patrol had shot Lykov's brother on the outskirts of their village while Lykov knelt working beside him. He had responded by scooping up his family and bolting into forest.

That was in 1936, and there were only four Lykovs then—Karp; his wife, Akulina; a son named Savin, 9 years old, and Natalia, a daughter who was only 2. Taking their possessions and some seeds, they had retreated ever deeper into the taiga, building themselves a succession of crude dwelling places, until at last they had fetched up in this desolate spot. Two more children had been born in the wild—Dmitry in 1940 and Agafia in 1943—and neither of the youngest Lykov children had ever seen a human being who was not a member of their family. All that Agafia and Dmitry knew of the outside world they learned entirely from their parents' stories. The family's principal entertainment, the Russian journalist Vasily Peskov noted, "was for everyone to recount their dreams."

Posted by gerardvanderleun at April 8, 2013 7:35 AM