Persecuted Christian Family Survived 40 Years in Wilderness

Teresa Neumann-Commentary : Feb 7, 2013
Mike Dash – The Smithsonian Magazine

The "astounding discovery" revealed a family living hundreds of miles from the nearest wilderness town whose only book was the Bible and whose "principal entertainment was for everyone to recount their dreams."

(Russia)—Peter the Great. Catherine the Great. Ivan the Terrible. The pre-Communist history of Russia reads like a Who's Who of some of the world's most tyrannical, egomaniacal monarchs. No wonder, then, that the Bolshevik Revolution would produce equally terrifying despots in the persons of Lenin and Stalin.

The atheistic Stalin, in particular, specialized in grand-scale brutality. Under his rule of "Socialism in one country," he began the collectivization of Russia that resulted in a series of pogroms against dissidents of which many were Christians. The end result was mass internal deportations to Siberia gulags and genocide. Many experts place the victims of Stalin's purges in the mid-twentieth century at a staggering 10 million souls.

With that backdrop, enter the family of "Old Believer" Christian, Karp Lykov, who had gathered up his wife and young daughter and son and escaped into the vast Siberian wilderness in 1936 after witnessing the execution of his brother by Communists. (Photo: Wiki Commons)

The Lykov's final destination was so remote they were virtually lost to the world for 40 years. With no electricity or way to communicate, they were suspended in time. It wasn't until 1978, when a government helicopter filled with a team of geologists scouting the terrain nearly 100 miles from the Mongolian border, spotted evidence of human habitation in a dangerously remote location, that the Lykovs were discovered.

As noted in the Smithsonian Magazine, the astounded geologists landed and approached the ramshackle hut, not sure what they would find. Seeing an old man emerge from the dwelling, they called out, "Greetings grandfather! We've come to visit!"

After a long pause, Karp said hesitantly, "Well, since you have traveled this far, you might as well come in."

Photographs of the Lykov family shortly after they were discovered (two more children were born to them in the wild) show them looking remarkably healthy, although they died shortly later from complications believed to have come from having contact with the outside world again. Karp's daughters are strikingly attractive despite their hardships and lack of modern beauty contrivances. Sons Savin and Dimitri are pictured as equally handsome hunters, who geologists said were "consummate" woodsmen equipped with astonishing endurance. Karp himself appears almost jaunty in pictures, wearing an expression of sparkling curiosity and childlike innocence.

The Smithsonian report on this discovery is an utterly fascinating read on many levels, not the least of which is the reaction the Lykov family had to the realities of the modern world.

"What amazed [Karp] most of all," said one scientist, "was a transparent cellophane package."

"Lord, what have they thought up?" exclaimed Karp when he saw it. "It is glass, but it crumples!"

Even small details, like how the Lykov children's' speech had changed within 40 years (their speech sounded like a "slow, blurred cooing") and how their mother, Akulina, used an ancient Bible they brought with them to teach the Gospels to her children, is mind-boggling.

Click on the link below to read this extraordinary, true life Robinson Crusoe story of faith and survival.