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sarbar
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PostWed Jan 30, 2013 4:47 pm 
This thread got me thinking and I did some research to back up what I thought I remembered reading years ago. Russia suffered massive famines/crop failures in the 1930's. In the 1930's the mortality rate for children was 200 would die out of every 1,000 at minimun. That means you can feel as sorry as you want for those children isolated, but in theory, their being isolated may have saved them. The children died of starvation and communicable diseases, such as now commonly treated ones. For every 5 children you bore, you might hope at best 4 would live. "The proportion of deaths caused by infectious diseases was particularly high in Russia at ages 1 to 14 and accounts for the vast majority of deaths in that age range, especially before age 5. It is significantly higher than in the United States (Figure 4.2).[15] High incidence of diarrheal diseases, measles, dysentery, scarlet fever, respiratory infections, and tuberculosis caused maximum losses in Russia" In 1938, the average Russian male lived to see 40 years. In the US it was nearly 62 years. Yes, nearly 22 years more!! http://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF124/cf124.chap4.html "At the beginning of the 20th century, life expectancy for the Russian population was extremely low (30 years for males and about 32 years for females in 1896-1897). It was about 15 years below the life expectancy levels for France, England and Wales, or the United States. In the 1920s, after a period of great social shocks in 1914-1922, important improvements were achieved in Russia. During that period, life expectancy increased by 10 years in men and 13 years in women. However, in the 1930s very little progress was achieved in Russia due to the famine of 1933 and the political persecutions of Stalin's era. As a result, in the 1930s the gap between Russia and the United States became even wider--about 20 years for both males and females" The point is...yes, those children were isolated. Disease though seems to not have been an issue where it would have been in a village/city. We cannot put our views of modern life on them. The concept of a "childhood" is something that came with the industrial revolution. Before that, once you were old enough, you were a liability/mouth to feed - and would have been working as hard as your father, even at 5 or 6. It is very sad to even dwell on what life was like then.

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Schroder
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PostWed Jan 30, 2013 7:05 pm 
There were a couple of guys living above Stehekin that someone ran into in the late 1940's. They asked if the war was over yet. They were draft dodgers - from World War 1.

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Blue Dome
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PostWed Jan 30, 2013 7:41 pm 
Of course, religious fanaticism, or for that matter any fanatical belief system, routinely leads people to do irrational things. This isn't news.
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Japanese holdouts or stragglers were Japanese soldiers in the Pacific Theatre who, after the August 1945 surrender of Japan ended World War II, either adamantly doubted the veracity of the formal surrender due to strong dogmatic or militaristic principles... Intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda, who surrendered on Lubang Island in the Philippines in March 1974, and Teruo Nakamura, who was stationed on Morotai Island in Indonesia and surrendered in December 1974, were the last confirmed holdouts...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout

“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.” — Harry S. Truman
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mtngirl79
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PostWed Jan 30, 2013 8:18 pm 
what doe ^ that have to do with a family fleeing persecution and living peacefully while they were completely isolated from the outside world?

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PostWed Jan 30, 2013 8:47 pm 
mtngirl79 wrote:
what doe ^ that have to do with a family fleeing persecution and living peacefully while they were completely isolated from the outside world?
Fanatical beliefs, religious or otherwise, make people do irrational things, such as still believing WWII is being fought 30 years after the war ended, or subjecting your children to a lifetime of hardship. From the OP's link:
Quote:
Slowly, over several visits, the full story of the family emerged. The old man's name was Karp Lykov, and he was an Old Believer—a member of a fundamentalist Russian Orthodox sect, worshiping in a style unchanged since the 17th century. Old Believers had been persecuted since the days of Peter the Great, and Lykov talked about it as though it had happened only yesterday; for him, Peter was a personal enemy and "the anti-Christ in human form"—a point he insisted had been amply proved by Tsar's campaign to modernize Russia by forcibly "chopping off the beards of Christians." But these centuries-old hatreds were conflated with more recent grievances; Karp was prone to complain in the same breath about a merchant who had refused to make a gift of 26 poods [940 pounds] of potatoes to the Old Believers sometime around 1900.
The father's religious fanaticism, or what could easily be argued as irrational thinking, or in more technical terms, loony nutball thinking, condemned his children to life in a hole in the ground. Romanticize it all you want, but it's pretty tough to paint life in a hole in the ground as an idyllic, woodland Shangri-La. Especially, when as a child, you have no other choice.

“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.” — Harry S. Truman
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sarbar
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PostWed Jan 30, 2013 9:16 pm 
Yeah, because staying put would have gone sooo well for them, had they not fled. rolleyes.gif They always had a choice - survive or die. Your notion is religion was a cover for nuttiness, yet, their entire way of life was being destroyed - and beyond that they were being taken out by the gov't. Crazy to run? No. There wasn't anyone to save them but themselves. Methinks you would think differently if it was your own life and family at stake.

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PostWed Jan 30, 2013 9:26 pm 
Fleeing violence is a good strategy. Forcing your children to live in a hole in the ground for the rest of their lives, apparently without any attempt to seek refuge in a sympathetic, relatively civilized region, because you believe in the following, is not admirable. From the OP's link:
Quote:
Slowly, over several visits, the full story of the family emerged. The old man's name was Karp Lykov, and he was an Old Believer—a member of a fundamentalist Russian Orthodox sect, worshiping in a style unchanged since the 17th century. Old Believers had been persecuted since the days of Peter the Great, and Lykov talked about it as though it had happened only yesterday; for him, Peter was a personal enemy and "the anti-Christ in human form"—a point he insisted had been amply proved by Tsar's campaign to modernize Russia by forcibly "chopping off the beards of Christians." But these centuries-old hatreds were conflated with more recent grievances; Karp was prone to complain in the same breath about a merchant who had refused to make a gift of 26 poods [940 pounds] of potatoes to the Old Believers sometime around 1900.

“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.” — Harry S. Truman
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PostWed Jan 30, 2013 10:46 pm 
Kevin wrote:
Before you get all sympathetic about the family, consider the damage they caused to the environment. They didn't practice LNT ethics. They built a permanent structure in a wilderness area. They made no effort to reduce their carbon footprint. The article didn't say whether or not the family purchased a Discover Pass, but I would be suspicious of any claims that they did. Criminals like this should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!!
Best post of the thread. It turns out that, in this case, their 'carbon footprint' was literally that. They'd walk out of their sooty cabin and leave dirty carbon footprints everywhere. Oh! The pollution!

If not now, when?
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PostThu Jan 31, 2013 12:12 am 
Read "Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin". That's where most of the WWII killings were, by far. Stalin got started in the early 1930s, with a couple million people more or less deliberately starved during the botched collectivization. Horrific tales of cannibalism. No place to go but elsewhere, but you can't leave. I believe the Old Believers are a potent force in the Alaska fishing industry. The story is reminiscent of Japanese soldiers holding out solo in Pacific island wilderness for decades -- one suspects raw survival was the main motive, and loyalty to the Emperor a distant second. Speculation. Civilization is well into a long downswing. I'm ready to gear up and disappear into the wilderness, preferably back to the 9th century. I'm taking my dentist, and penicillin. Maybe my file cabinet. Gotta learn how to grow coffee first. If you can sneak into Chernobyl, or the Korean DMZ, people leave you alone. Look out for land mines.

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Bernardo
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PostThu Jan 31, 2013 1:35 pm 
Not to mention the 23 million Soviet citizens who died in WWII.

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iron
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PostThu Jan 31, 2013 5:21 pm 
Doppelganger wrote:
None of us were living in Russia 100 years ago, so we don't understand why they fled civilization.
speak for yourself. i am an element of this planet you call earth... moon.gif

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Malachai Constant
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PostThu Jan 31, 2013 6:23 pm 
Some would say the core of the earth, which is French for heart (coeur) wink.gif

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PostThu Jan 31, 2013 8:34 pm 
One wonders how many more there were, hiding in "five million square miles of nothingness". They can't have been the only ones.

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PostThu Jan 31, 2013 10:42 pm 
Seventy2002 wrote:
One wonders how many more there were, hiding in "five million square miles of nothingness". They can't have been the only ones.
There are many people hiding from "Evil world" in the woods there... Many of them are what article call "Old Believers" better translation will be "one who belive in the old way of believing". They are kind of Amish in USA, got stuck in the past, believing that world is evil and they have to separate from it. There are quite a few of the same sect in Canada, they came there with help of Tolstoy who kind of joined them in his older days. They are living their lives separate from the world based on their religious belives. Some of my friends have visited them, and have personal contact with them. I guess because I am russian, I can read more in russian about that story in the article. Little more about that "lost" family, all the children at adult age stayed there by their own choosing, and one who stili alive, Agafia, still lives there alone pushing age of 80 (as of last summer). She have regular help by helicopter drops, have cosines living in "neighboring" communities. Been in nearest towns, traveled on the helicopter and train, have seen the "modern world" and chose to go back to her home into the woods. "Old Believers" is a religious sect, and they do have some weird customs and traditions. Some are really weird... well... they are probobly thinking of rest of the world as weird...

"I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. From where shall my help come. My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth!" - David, King of Israel 1,000 BC
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PostThu Jan 31, 2013 10:53 pm 
the article links to three videos which are worth watching, even if you don't understand a word of Russian.

"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
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