An old believer

“Agafia” is a RT documentary about Agafia Lykova, an Old Believer living an isolated life in the Siberian taiga, more specifically in the Russian Federation “republic” of Khakassia. The Old Believers are the result of a split in the Russian Orthodox Church during the 17^th century, the famous Raskol. During the Soviet period, Orthodox believers of various stripes were often persecuted by the Communist-atheist regime. The Lykov family fled to the wilderness in 1938, and although they were technically still on Soviet territory, the authorities didn´t find them until 1978. Then, a team of Soviet geologists accidentally run into the family in the taiga. By that time, dissenters weren´t shot on the spot as in the good ol´ days of Joe Stalin, so the Lykovs instead became national and international celebrities. (They were presumably politically harmless.) This has continued during the post-Soviet era, with Agafia – the last of the Lykovs – still being fêted by international news networks.

The shtick that Agafia Lykova is a completely isolated hermit turns out to be problematic at second glance. She lives in the Siberian wilderness, to be sure, but the RT documentary reveals that she receives substantial amounts of aid from the outside, sometimes by chopper, and often puts people who come to visit her to work on her farm. Some of her apocalyptic ideas are strikingly similar to those of the Protestant fundamentalists in the United States – thus, Agafia is afraid of perfectly ordinary bar codes, seeing them as “the mark of the Beast”. Where did she learn this, I wonder? (Guess: Seraphim Rose´s books!) The documentary also reveals more disturbing things, such as incest in the Lykov family and a relationship between Agafia and one of the geologists (who stayed behind in the taiga). Agafia´s religious ideas come across as weird and cultish, and I´m not sure if she is an orthodox Old Believer (pun intended). At one point, she claims that our calendars are 8 years too short! I admit I failed to find information about *this* particular conspiracy theory on the web…

Apart from this documentary, which I think is Russian-French despite the English voice over, there is also a VICE documentary available on YouTube about pretty much the same things (it´s shorter).