Antipins (hermits)

From childhood, Victor Martsinkevich dreamed of a person returning to his natural habitat, which he called "eco-return." He believed that man should return to the wild and live in harmony with it. And creating and perfecting his civilization, a person destroys himself. All his life he dreamed of founding a “school of nature” so that humanity would learn to survive in a natural environment.

Victor believed that for housing you need to find a clean and quiet place. The standard for him was the country that he called Factoria , which once dreamed of him. There are no signs of civilization in this country. And his children, who grew up in such conditions, will not be crammed with vices of society, will not drink, smoke, swear. He deduced three commandments, according to which his family lived and which she constantly repeated:

1. The happiness of life lies in its simplicity.
2. Man, strive for nature - you will be healthy.
3. A disease is a signal for a change in lifestyle.

Victor believed that a person should be content with little. And you need to take what nature gives to the inhabitants. Therefore, he did not have firearms, although he was a good hunter ^[2] .

Even before going into the wild, the hermit knew the taiga hermits of the Lykovs . However, he was not satisfied with many features of their lifestyle, in particular, their religiosity. “Faith prevents them from living,” he said more than once, “she fetters them, they are not free. You need to work, not pray, ”he said.

Victor Granitovich Martsinkevich was born in 1950 in Smolensk. His parents are from intelligent families, highly educated: his father is an official on a regional scale, and his mother worked as an employee of the library of a scientific institute. He received two higher education in Gorky , had knowledge of astronomy, physics, biology. Since childhood, he read a lot, thought a lot and came to the conclusion about the need for mankind to live in the wild. From childhood, he dreamed of becoming a forester or even a taiga, although he did not know the word “taiga”. Moreover, he never had a passport (???, 2 higher educations without an identity card?), Since he considered him a “humiliating mark of civilization”.

After studying, he went from Smolensk to Siberia. He came to Kirengu from Lena . He decided to travel all over Siberia in order to study its nature and to be convinced of its pristine nature. He decided to become a hermit in order to get away from diseases, crime and other vices and live, according to him, “on warm earth” ^[3] .

Anna Artemyevna Tretyakova was born in 1966 in the village of Korotkovo in the Kazachinsko-Lensky district of the Irkutsk region . Her parents worked at the timber industry farm, her father was a hunter and fisherman and often took Anna with him. Anna graduated from the eight-year school in the village of Ermaki, then her parents began to travel to different regions of the country: the Bryansk region , the Krasnoyarsk Territory , and other areas. There they often lived in the forest, they extracted gum, they hunted.

From the age of eight, Anna hunted on the Podkamennaya Tunguska . Even then, she knew how to shoot from any gun, and her father taught her how to make loops and snares for small animals. From childhood, taiga was a habitual affair for her, the meaning of life. This became its main prerequisite for life away from civilization ^[3] .

In 1982, Anna moved with her parents to her small homeland. In the same year, Victor from the taiga through Lena appeared in the village of Korotkovo and asked to spend the night in the house of Anna's mother. He met Anna's mother, and became Anna's stepfather. Later he fell in love with Anna, the feeling was reciprocal. He told Anna tales about the country of the Factoria, which he dreamed about. There are no signs of civilization in this country, and people in it live according to the laws of nature. And Anna was not against living in the wild. After some time, she became pregnant from him, and then Victor invited her to leave alone in the forest. They realized that they could find happiness together. Victor hid his western origin as best he could, and so he took the name of his common-law wife's mother, Antipin. In his opinion, such a name was better suited for him as a seasoned taiga. “Anti” - “against”, he argued. Against civilization.

In 1983, Victor and Anna went deep into the Evenki taiga, 200 km from the nearest settlements, and settled in a small hut. There they had a son, they called Severyan, but he died of a cold. A year later, another son, Vanya, was born, who died six years old, contracting tick-borne encephalitis . Maybe he could have been saved, but, firstly, the nearest hospital was very far away, and secondly, Victor did not let Anna out of the woods under pain of death. Victor himself told Anna that in vivo the strongest survive.

In February 1986, a daughter was born to Victor and Anna. Winter was difficult, it was possible to survive thanks to Victor's capture of a deer from the herd passing by their house. At first they wanted to name their daughter Assoly, according to Green, but in honor of the deer who helped her survive, they decided to call her Deer.

After the birth of Deer, the family moved to more well-fed, albeit deaf areas, to the Biryusa river. There, Victor had to temporarily get a job in the Chemical Forestry Department to harvest wood and tar. The family allocated a plot in the taiga and beams (temporary housing on runners). On the plot, they grew vegetables, and lived in a beam of eight square meters. But a year later, the enterprise fell apart, and Victor's work was completed. Employees of the enterprise were evacuated, but Victor and his family refused.

After that, Vitya, Misha and Alesia were born in the family. Victor decided to name the eldest son by his name, and the youngest - in honor of the bear - the owner of the taiga. The name of the daughter of Alesi Victor was interpreted as follows: "Aloe is a child of the forest."

Victor, in order to feed his family, was forced to go out to the nearest village for things. Acquired food, clothing, shoes, newspapers, etc., and calculated on mined animals, wood products, or worked out, for example, talking or preparing various herbs and gatherings. He brought with him newspapers such as Arguments and Facts and Komsomolskaya Pravda . His family re-read them regularly and therefore knew what was happening on the mainland. The most striking news was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the terrorist attack in New York on September 11, 2001 . It was these news that did not allow Anna to refuse to return to the people and stay with Victor in the taiga.

Children who grew up in the remote taiga, from childhood knew how to hunt and fish. At the age of 8, Olenya, Vitya and Misha went to the "circles" where the loops on animal fords stood. The main food in the family was squirrels, ushkans (hares), birds, in the summer - nuts, mushrooms, berries, as well as vegetables from the garden and everything that Victor brought from the village.

The family made clothes themselves. Anna sewed and altered clothes herself. She taught children to read, write, write, count; she read books that Viktor traded. Therefore, the children of Anna and Victor were not illiterate. Deer herself sews well, knits, draws, writes songs and poems. Her handwritten collection is all about nature and especially taiga.

There were no watches, no calendars, no radio, and no more television in the taiga. The family kept a home-made calendar, and determined the birth of children according to their natural landmarks - sunrise and sunset, the first drop, birds flying and falling leaves. Also celebrated holidays - birthdays, New Year . Especially for the holiday they cherished white flour, from which they baked kalach, hung on the Christmas tree, and on New Year's Eve solemnly ate.

Over time, Victor could no longer feed his family, and Anna realized that she was expecting her children. Because of this, conflicts began in the family. Anna decided with her children to leave the taiga to people, but Victor did not let her go. Then Anna and Olenia secretly decided to ask for help from the chairman of the Serebrovsky village council Vasily Obukhov. He decided to take his family out of the forest. Victor refused to return to the people and remained in the taiga ^[4] .

Victor Antipin was found dead in her trailer by the eldest daughter of Deer. Victor Antipin died on March 27, 2004. The cause of death was famine ^[5] . According to other sources, Victor Antipin, three weeks before his death, caught a cold and lay down in his home. He expected someone to come, but when he despaired, he wrote his suicide note, in which he told about his suicide days and bequeathed to him to be buried in the taiga next to his apartment. Viktor Antipin was buried in the taiga near the Biryusa River near his home, at his request. According to Anna Antipina, she understood that her husband would not survive in the taiga alone, but could not convince him to go out to people. Victor even looked for a sponsor who would provide him with everything necessary to go even further into the taiga, where a man’s foot had not set foot. ^[6]

In November 2002, Anna was thirty-six years old, and the children, Deer, Vite, Misha and Ales, were sixteen, twelve, eight years old and three years old, respectively ^[7] .

Anna and the children were settled in the village of Serebrovo, Taishet district . There they were allocated an empty wooden house with three rooms. Anna had nothing to live on: she had no education, and even with education it was not easy to get a job. Subsequently, Anna began to live on benefits that she received on her children. Sometimes in the summer she sold collected mushrooms, berries, nuts, herbs. The villagers helped them financially - with lime for whitewashing the walls and potatoes. The TV show “ What a Woman Wants ” sent them 15,000 rubles, for which they bought a house ^[8] .

Anna's children, having lived for a long time in the remote taiga, have never seen the simplest household appliances. For example, when Vitya first heard the noise of a working refrigerator, he was very scared. He also dreamed of seeing a train. Deer never saw other people and did not even imagine how they look.

At first, the children experienced a real information shock. When they saw television for the first time, they watched it for six hours in a row: news, films, advertisements. And having met with peers, they began to be friendly with them. Reindeer, having lived 17 years in the taiga, are reluctant to communicate with them, since they drink and smoke. She even went to a disco, but she didn’t like it there: everywhere the smell of tobacco and fumes and obscene expressions.

A teacher began to come to the house of the Antipins to deal with children. Deer in one year mastered the program of the 1st and 2nd classes, but refused the various sciences: algebra, physics, chemistry, etc.

Anna Antipina had to prove her motherhood in court against her own children. The main witness in the case was Deer, who, together with her father, received the birth of her younger brothers and sisters - Viti, Misha and Alesya from her mother. At the trial, Anna refused the surname Antipin, in favor of her maiden name Tretyakov: in order to receive a long-term allowance, you need to be a single mother. Reindeer refused her name and received a passport with a new name - Alena ^[4] .

After receiving the documents, all the children began to study at school, albeit from the beginning. Since that time, they made their first friends who began to provide them with sponsorship - the family of Alexei and Zoe Morozov.

After some time, Anna remarried a local resident, Alexander Nagorny. She bore him two more children - daughters Snezhanna and Svetlana ^[9] .

Alyona Tretyakova went to the taiga to her father, but found him dead there. Alena buried her father and after that returned to the village where she began to live her life: she got married, works as a cleaner, as there is no way to get another job. Despite the fact that Anna lives better in the village than in the taiga with her ex-husband, sometimes Anna is still drawn to the taiga, which her new husband does not understand. We can say that now Anna Tretyakova, in the past Antipina, lives a completely prosperous and full-fledged life ^[10] .

Victor Antipin always hoped for any help, in particular, on accepting the essence of his experiment on the return of man to his natural habitat, on a sponsor who could help them build a house. Therefore, he wrote many letters to Moscow , including Joseph Kobzon . But he never received a response to a single letter. However, they did not forget him. In the mid-2000s, like-minded letters began to write to him about his ideas. However, his children have to answer that it’s too late, this person is not alive ^[10] .

Anna Tretyakova works as a watchman at a school in the village of Solyanaya . Sons Vitya and Misha served in the army, after which they left the village because there was no work. Vitya works in a neighboring village on a sawmill, married, has a child, although his relationship with his mother went wrong. Misha works as a driver in Angarsk . They are engaged in hunting, fishing, do not drink, do not smoke, but they have no education. Alesya studies at the Irkutsk College of Economics of Service and Tourism. Now she is married to a local resident of Angarsk, Sergei Rudakov. ^[11] . Daughters Snezhanna and Sveta from their second marriage go to school.

The deer got married, gave birth to a daughter, Tanya. Her husband is almost 10 years older than her, engaged in hunting and fishing, and won her trips to the taiga. Interestingly, the Deer became very religious, reading the Bible . After the death of her father, she began to help her. For example, she read in the Bible that the dead do not see us anywhere. Due to the large number of household chores, Deer hardly goes to the forest. Now she does not yearn for the old taiga life, but earlier she wanted to return to the taiga. In her short term - get a driver’s license. Deer has finished her studies in Taishet DOSAAF e and is preparing to pass exams.

Anna Tretyakova understood that the taiga taught her a lot - to fish, chop wood, and her character remained strong: she did not drink too much, did not go down, and even would not mind returning to the taiga, but with age she no longer has the strength to live in such conditions ^[12] .

• Lykovs (hermits)
• Naumkin, Odzhan Aleksandrovich