Agafya Lykova is known to many Russian residents. Sometimes they write about her in the newspapers, talk about it on TV. Lykova became famous for the fact that she lives as a hermit in the taiga, not recognizing the latest achievements of civilization.
The wooden house of Agafya Karpovna Lykova is located on the lands of Khakassia - a small republic with majestic mountains and harsh taiga. The waters of the mighty Siberian river Yenisei or Ionesse, as some locals call it, flow across the entire territory of the country from south to north. Khakassia is very rich in historical monuments. Over thirty thousand different signs of the copper, bronze, iron ages have been found in its land.
Agafya Lykova's ancestors belonged to the Old Believers and also lived in hermitage. In the early 1930s, they were still in the community of co-religionists in a taiga settlement, but later, due to conflicts that arose, they separated from everyone. Soon they had to change their place of residence due to the fact that during the Great Patriotic War they were looking for deserters in those places. The Lykovs hid in the mountains and spent about thirty years in complete seclusion. To survive, they engaged in fishing, agriculture, picked mushrooms and berries, and hunted. Their religious beliefs did not allow them to eat animals with claws, since according to their beliefs they were the personification of evil spirits. Lykovs dug pit traps for cloven-hoofed animals - the main source of protein food.
In 1978, a group of geologists accidentally discovered in the mountains, far from civilization, the Lykov family. The Old Believers resembled the inhabitants of the 17th century, they were so unaccustomed to any contact with people that they suffered a lot of stress as a result of this meeting. Soon, one after the other, two sons and a daughter of the Lykovs died.
In 1982, a number of articles about this strange family were published in newspapers and magazines. They cited the surprisingly naive reasoning of the head of the family, Karp Lykov, about a cellophane bag, which “is like glass, but crumples”; described the story of how a family of hermits first saw a television brought by geologists.
Now of the large family of Old Believers Lykovs (father, mother, two sons and two daughters), only the youngest daughter Agafya has survived. She continues family traditions and is engaged in fishing, gathering and farming. Agafya Karpovna is not indifferent to some things from worldly life. Thanks to visiting geologists, she competently uses a clock, a thermometer, although she had no idea about their existence before. Through the efforts of the same geologists, Agafya Lykova even flew by helicopter, traveled on the train to her relatives and went to the city hospital.
Every morning, barely waking up, the hermit prays, then her daily worries begin: a vegetable garden, preparations for the winter, etc. Relatives have repeatedly persuaded Agafya to move to the city with them, but the woman does not want to change her life. At 68, she is no longer as hardy and strong as before, but the strength of spirit and faith of the hermit is strong, just as her attachment to these places where her ancestors lived is strong.
