Agafia Lykova

Agafia Karpovna Lykova (; born 9 April 1945 ) is a Russian Old Believer, part of the Lykov family, who has lived alone in the taiga for most of her life. , she resides in the Western Sayan mountains, in the Republic of Khakassia. Lykova became a national phenomenon in the early 1980s when Vasily Peskov published articles about her family and their extreme isolation from the rest of society.

Lykova lives at on a remote mountainside in the Abakan Range, from the nearest town. For the first 35 years of her life Lykova did not have contact with anyone outside of her immediate family. Information about the outside world came from her father's stories and the family's Russian Orthodox Bible.

In the summer of 1978 a group of four geologists discovered the family by chance while circling the area in a helicopter. The scientists reported that Lykova spoke a language "distorted by a lifetime of isolation" that sounded akin to a "slow, blurred cooing". Peskov's book reports that Lykova's vocabulary expanded as she made further contact with the larger world and he reports many of her uses of "unexpected" words in conversation.

Isolation

In 70 years, Lykova has ventured out of the family settlement six times. The first time was in the 1980s, shortly after Vasily Peskov's articles about the family's isolation turned them into a national phenomenon. The Soviet government paid for her to tour the Soviet Union for a month, during which time she saw airplanes, horses, cars and money for the first time. In 2014 Agafia formally rejoined the Belokrinitskaya branch of the Old Believers during a visit by Metropolitan Korniliy (Titov) coinciding with her 69th birthday. In 2014 she wrote a letter, which was published online, requesting anyone to come to her home to be her helper as her "strength is going". She claimed in that letter to have "a lump on [her] right breast", a possible sign that she has developed cancer.

In January 2016 it was reported that Lykova was airlifted to a hospital with leg pain. Agafia was treated at a hospital in Tashtagol and planned to return to the wilderness once emergency services were able to airlift her home. According to The Siberian Times she did and was still living there. In 2021 it was reported that the oligarch Oleg Deripaska had paid for the construction of a new cabin in the wilderness for her to live in due to the deterioration of her previous dwelling.

Lykova now lives with the assistance of a park ranger and substantial state support.

Relationships

During her talks with Peskov, Lykova told him she was married to someone during one of her trips outside of the taiga. No further information was offered.