Every inhabitant of the republic has seen the Old Believers at least once - their appearance is not typical for a person of the 21st century. - mustaches and beards for men, women's heads covered with a scarf, necessarily - a pectoral cross. Not much people know about the peculiarities of this small group of Tuva, which has preserved a unique culture and way of life. There is an objective reason for this: avoiding contact with the outside world, the Old Believers settled and now live compactly in hard-to-reach places - in the upper Yenisei in the Kaa-Khemsky district and dispersed in the Tandinsky, Todzhinsky districts and in the city of Kyzyl. It is difficult to even name the exact number of Old Believers, according to experts, there are not many of them left - from 500 to 1000 representatives.
Who are the Old Believers? When and why did they move to Tuva? Which scientists studied their culture, what secrets do you need to know? For answers to these and other questions, we turned to PhD in Philology, a leading researcher in the cultural sector of TIGI. In February of this year, she supported the monograph "Old Believers in Tuva" (Novosibirsk, 2006).
Who are the Old Believers?
The Old Believers are Orthodox Christians who did not accept the church reform. In 1666-1667. Patriarch Nikon introduced a series of changes to bring Russian Orthodox rites into line with Greek canons and turn Moscow into the Third Rome. He ordered the sign of the cross to be made with three fingers instead of two; the so-called. throwing, or small prostrations; religious processions began to be carried out in the opposite direction (against the sun, and not salting); the exclamation “Hallelujah” during the singing in honor of the Holy Trinity began to be pronounced not twice, but three times, etc.
With the support of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, the highest Orthodox clergy imposed a ban on the old rites (hence their adherents were called Old Believers) and anathematized (excommunicated from the church) all those who observed them. For several centuries, the Old Believers or, as they were also called, schismatics, heretics were subjected to severe persecution. Without submitting, many of them set themselves on fire, some were exterminated, and some emigrated to Australia and the United States or fled to remote and sparsely populated areas of Russia.
At present, in addition to Russia (up to 2 million people), there are Old Believer communities in Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, the USA, Canada and a number of Latin American countries, as well as in Australia.
In search of the legendary Belovodye - to Tuva
From the book of M.P. Tatarintseva, we learn that the mass migration of Old Believers to Tuva took place in the last decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were attracted by "backwoods and freedom" - Tuva at that time did not belong to Russia, it was a foreign land, a foreign land. They moved here in search of the legendary Belovodye - a place remote from the world, inaccessible to the "servants of the Antichrist" (as they called the royal officials), where the pre-Iconian faith was preserved, goodness and justice reign. The Old Believers fled, also trying to save their sons from military service, fleeing from taxation and taxes, and later from wars, revolutions, collective farms and dispossession.
The first permanent settlers in Tuva were the Old Believers from the village. Usinsky (now the south of the Krasnoyarsk Territory). The river valley was the first to be settled. Uyuk, convenient for arable farming. The names and surnames of Russian settlers gave the name to the zaimkas, and then to the first villages. This is how Danilovka, Fedorovka, Zubovka, Vladimirovka and others appeared. New villages were also named after Christian saints and religious holidays that coincided with the foundation of the settlement: Ilyinka, Uspenka, Petropavlovka, Znamenka. The economic development of new lands, as well as resettlement, proceeded in difficult conditions. The Old Believers survived and gained a foothold thanks to their faith, exceptional diligence, patience, perseverance and perseverance. The settlers, who had extensive agricultural experience, brought with them agricultural implements, seeds and livestock.
In 1913, according to archival data, 1360 Old Believers lived in Tuva, most of them lived in the Maloeniseisky (now Kaa-Khemsky) district, in others there were from 10 to 30%. Later, they began to move to more remote places, mainly in the upper reaches of the Yenisei, out of a desire to avoid constant communication with the “heretic Nikonians”. According to O. Khomushku in the early 1960s. up to 400 Old Believer families lived in Tuva.
The Old Believers are split into two currents: in Tuva there are more representatives of the radical trend - bespopovtsy. They do without priests and do not accept everything "worldly": marriages, laws, military service, passports, money and any authority. Popovtsy preserve the Old Believer church and priests, they are loyal to the authorities.
Secrets of communication with the Old Believers
- Margarita Petrovna, we congratulate you on the state award! Why, out of the many topics worthy of scientific study, did you choose this particular one?
The topic "Old Believers in Tuva" is a natural continuation of the study of Russian settlers in Tuva. Before her, for many years I collected, and then began to publish collections of Russian folklore in Tuva, studied the work of Russian writers of Tuva, then took up the Old Believers.
The topic of the Old Believers was considered closed for a long time, the study of this confessional group was not encouraged. It seems that the authorities had an opinion that over time this relic - the Old Believers - would disappear by itself. However, already in the 1990s. an active study of a previously forbidden topic began, and I also got into this stream, studying the history and culture of our local Old Believers.
- Where did you collect materials for the book?
- I had to travel a lot to different villages and villages - since the late 1970s. It was necessary to collect folklore from Russian old-timers of Tuva living in different regions. In search of experts in folklore, I sometimes came across Old Believers. Their behavior was distinguished by sedateness, regularity and restraint in communication, it seemed to me closeness, a desire to avoid unnecessary contacts. Then I managed to record individual samples of the folklore of the Old Believers in the Tes-Khem region. In 1995-1996 and 2005, I already purposefully collected materials in the villages of Erzhey, Sizim, Saryg-Sep of the Kaa-Khem district, Durgen, Sosnovka, Bai-Khaak of the Tandinsky district and Toora-Kheme of the Todzhinsky district.
- Tell us about your first meeting with the Old Believers.
In the summer of 1981, I went to the Tes-Khem district, to the villages of Shuurmak and Kurany. At that time, mostly Old Believers lived there, now they are no longer there. In Kurany, a tiny village, mostly elderly women lived. Work - recording folklore - I didn’t get along with them at all. In general, they took me almost for a Martian - a woman in jeans, an open T-shirt, with a Reporter tape recorder over her shoulder, with her head uncovered and wearing dark glasses, jumped out of the back of a ride and wants to be sung songs and ditties! Now I understand what impression I made, but then it was a shame - so many efforts were made, and all wasted!
How did you convince them to open up to you?
This is not an easy matter, not every informant wants to sing or tell - they are shy, do not rely on memory, or even simply do not see any use in it. I had to learn how to persuade and explain the meaning and significance of my work. True, I still knew little about the characteristics of this group of the local Russian population, I was upset because of the failure to work with such performers. Now I know that the Old Believers will never sing on Lent, on Wednesday and Friday, and so on.
Even the appearance - pants on women, bright makeup, an uncovered head can become an obstacle to establishing contact. They will not talk to you on the topic you proposed, or, on the contrary, they will ask you questions (and the subtext will be: 
it is possible for a woman to dress like this, to do such work - to travel around the villages and villages, leaving her family, etc.). Later, when I “wised up” and learned to communicate with the Old Believers, and I myself became older, which is important, and began to dress accordingly, it was no longer difficult to establish contact with an Old Believer informant.
And the most important thing is - I tell my students this too - that you should treat any informant with great respect and interest, whether you collect folklore or other ethnographic material. Patiently and persistently explain the meaning and value of your work, then your interlocutor will also become interested in you, your occupation and his own self-esteem will increase as an expert on important things (perhaps the last or one of the few).
We will continue our conversation about the culture and life of the Old Believers. In the next publication, we will consider the distinctive features of the culture of the Old Believers living in Tuva, including the impact of globalization and scientific and technological progress on it.
Photographer and traveler Oleg Smoliy is looking for and taking pictures of everything good and beautiful that our country is rich in. He combined these shots into the Unforgotten Russia project, part of which are the photographs of the Old Believer Siberian villages published below. And they are accompanied by a heartfelt story of the author about the people living there.
Having passed remote villages on the banks of the Small Yenisei - Erzhey, Upper Shivey, Choduraalyg and Ok-Chara - I met five large families of Old Believers. Always persecuted, the owners of the taiga do not immediately make contact with strangers, especially with a photographer. However, two weeks of living next to them, helping in their daily hard work - harvesting hay, catching fish, picking berries and mushrooms, preparing firewood and brushwood, collecting moss and building a house - step by step helped to overcome the veil of distrust. And strong and independent, good-natured and hardworking people were revealed, whose happiness lies in love for God, their children and nature.
The liturgical reform undertaken by Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in the 17th century led to a large-scale schism in the Russian Church. The brutal persecution of the tsarist and religious authorities, who wanted to bring the people to unanimity and humility, forced millions of Russian people to leave their homes. The Old Believers, who kept their faith, fled to the White Sea, to the Olonets region and the Nizhny Novgorod forests. Time passed, the hands of power reached the Old Believers in new places, and the seekers of independence went even further, into the remote taiga of Siberia. In the 19th century, Russian people came to the remote area of the Small Yenisei, the Kaa-Khemsky kozhuun of Tuva. New settlements were laid on lands suitable for farming in the river valley, higher and higher upstream. Here, in the upper reaches of the Small Yenisei, the life and traditions of the Russian Old Believers have been preserved in their original form.
On the road, we gathered a small team of photographing travelers, five of us. Very far from Moscow. By plane to Abakan, then about ten hours by car through Kyzyl, the capital of the Republic of Tuva, to Saryg-Sep, the regional center, there we transfer to the UAZ-"loaf" and for a couple of hours we reach the point on the banks of the Small Yenisei by forest roads. On the other side of the river, to the camp site "Erzhey", we cross by boat. The owner of the base, Nikolay Siorpas, brought us in his UAZ. He will be lucky further, to the taiga depths, but you have to wait a day or two until the road washed out by long rains dries up at the pass.
Erzhey, next to which the base is located, is a large village with a population of up to one and a half thousand inhabitants, with electricity and a boarding school, where the Old Believers bring their children from the huts up the Kaa-Khem, as the Small Yenisei is called in Tuvan. In the old faith, not all villagers are here. Some of the locals are close to it, but they are not included in the community, there is not enough rigor. There are also representatives of the new Orthodox faith. There are even non-believers.
It was not far to go to see the village and buy groceries, less than a kilometer from the base. Siorpas, seeing him off, joked: “You can distinguish the Old Believers: men with beards, there are a dozen or so kids in the yard, a little less, women in headscarves and skirts to heels, in a year or two with a tummy.”
Here is the first acquaintance: Maria, a young woman with a stroller. We greeted each other and asked where to buy bread and cottage cheese. At first, she was wary of strangers, but she did not refuse help, she even surprised me with her responsiveness. She took her around Erzhei, showing who had the tastier milk, where the salted milk mushrooms were good.
Here, in villages remote from civilization, the harsh taiga nature has imposed its own characteristics on the way of managing. Summer in these places is short, and winter comes with hard frosts. Arable land is reclaimed with great difficulty from the forest, in the valleys along the banks of the river. The locals grow bread and plant vegetable gardens. Due to frost, perennial crops do not take root, but annuals grow, even small watermelons. Taiga feeds. They beat only hoofed animals, they eat wild meat. Collect pine nuts, mushrooms, berries for jam. The river gives fish. There is a lot of grayling here, and taimen is often released - it has become scarce in recent years.
The Old Believers do not drink, they do not drink “kazenka” at all, and on holidays they eat a glass or two of weak homemade wine on taiga berries, blueberries or stone fruits.
Having rested at the base of Siorpas for a couple of days, we waited for dry weather and moved to the first old-believers' settlement - Upper Shivei, forty kilometers from Erzhei, with a difficult pass through the hills.
All the way to Shivei, Nikolai Siorpas, under the strained hum of the engine, urged us to be overly respectful and behave more than modestly, not to push people with their huge photo guns. He himself is not an Old Believer, but Nikolai developed good relations with the taiga residents, for which he reasonably feared. It seems that these two days at the base he not only waited for the weather, but also looked at us, and thought whether it was possible to take us further.
We met the working people of Upper Shivei long before the settlement, on a mowing meadow. They asked for help, throwing mowed hay into high stacks - germs.
We rolled up our sleeves, tried our best and still fell behind. It was not easy to learn how to lift large armfuls with long three-pronged wooden pitchforks. Working together, they got to know each other, struck up conversations.
Mowed and dried grass is collected into germs - this is how the whole of Siberia calls haystacks. Laying them is a responsible matter: the hay should lie evenly and tightly so that it does not disperse in the wind and does not ferment in the rain. Upper Shiwei
Petr and Ekaterina Sasins arrived at the Upper Shivei lodge, then empty, about fifteen years ago. The economy was raised from scratch, they lived and wintered at first in a shed. Year after year they built, strengthened, raised three daughters. Then other relatives came to settle, now several families live here. The daughters grew up, moved to the city, and now restless grandchildren come to Peter and Catherine for the summer - two girls and two boys.
The Sasins' grandchildren are completely worldly, they come for the whole summer. For them, Petr Grigorievich keeps solar batteries with a battery and a converter, from which he turns on a small TV and a disc player - to watch cartoons. Upper Shiwei
With a cheerful noise, our tent camp was awakened by the kids, who brought fresh milk and sour cream. The second day, throwing hay at the plants is more difficult - all the muscles hurt from the unaccustomedness of the townspeople. But the faces of the owners, smiles, laughter and approval are already warmer. “Tomorrow is the Transfiguration, come! You will try homemade wine, ”the villagers call.
The house is simple, no frills, but clean and sound. Spacious vestibules dividing the house in half, whitewashed walls in the rooms, large stoves in the middle, iron spring beds reminded me of a Carpathian village, which also largely preserved its way of life. "One at a time!" - says Petr Grigorievich, and we try a delicious drink. Blueberry juice is infused for a year without sugar and yeast, and a wine with a barely noticeable degree is obtained. It is easy to drink and does not intoxicate, but it lifts the mood and enhances talkativeness. Joke after joke, story after story, song after song - we had a good time. "Do you want to see my horses?" calls Peter.
The stable is located on the outskirts, there are two dozen horses, there are even pacers. And all loved ones. Petr Grigoryevich can talk about each foal for hours.
We parted with the Sasins like old friends. And again on the road, on a boat up the Small Yenisei.
Before the next zaimka up the river for half an hour to sail on a motorboat. We found Choduraalyg on a fairly high bank with a spacious, cornice-like valley, the outermost houses stand directly above the river. The opposite shore is an almost sheer, taiga-covered mountain.
The place here is convenient for farming, growing bread, raising livestock. There are arable fields. River, nurse and transport artery. In winter, you can get to Kyzyl on the ice. And the taiga - here it is, begins with the hills on the edge of the zaimka.
We sailed, threw our backpacks ashore and went to look for where it would be convenient to set up tents so as not to interfere with anyone and at the same time to see everything around well. We met grandfather Eliferiy, who treated him to freshly baked delicious bread and advised me to go to Baba Marfa: “Marfutka will accept and help.”
Marfa Sergeevna, thin, small and active, about seventy, gave us a place for tents next to her small house with a beautiful view of both the river and the village. Allowed to use the stove and kitchen utensils. For the Old Believers, this is a difficult question - there is sin from the dishes that worldly people took. All the time Marfa Sergeevna took care of us. We also helped her - we picked berries, carried brushwood, chopped firewood.
Her younger son, Dmitry, was on business in the taiga. The eldest daughter, Ekaterina, got married and lives in Germany, sometimes her mother comes to visit.
I had a satellite phone, and I suggested that Marfa Sergeevna call her daughter. "It's all demonic," grandmother Marfa refused. Dmitry returned a couple of days later, and we dialed his sister's number, turning up the volume. Hearing her daughter's voice, forgetting about the demons and throwing down her bow, Marfa Sergeevna ran across the clearing to Dima and me. It’s a pity that she didn’t allow herself to be photographed then, otherwise it would have turned out to be an interesting picture: a pretty little village grandmother in ancient clothes stands against the backdrop of the taiga, beaming with a smile, and talking to her daughter in distant Germany on a satellite phone.
In the neighborhood of Marfa Sergeevna, further from the coast, lives a large family of Panfil Petenev. The eldest of the twelve offspring, Gregory, aged 23, called us to the place of children's games - a clearing in the forest outside the village. On Sundays, smartly dressed children from all nearby villages run and come on horseback, bicycles and motorcycles to chat and play enough together. The guys were not shy for long, and after about ten minutes we were playing ball with them, answering a sea of curious questions and listening to stories about life in the villages, bears pampering now and a strict grandfather who chases all children for mischief. They made us laugh with stories, were interested in technology and even tried to take pictures with our cameras, posing intensely for each other. And we ourselves listened with pleasure to pure, like a stream, Russian speech and enjoyed shooting bright Slavic faces.
For the children of the Old Believers, the horse is not a problem. Helping with the housework, they learn early to communicate with pets.
It turns out that Choduraalyg, where we stopped, is called Big, and not far away, the road runs just past the playground, there is also Small Choduraalyg. The children volunteered to show this second, from several yards in the depths of the forest, a zaimka. They drove us cheerfully, on two motorcycles, along trails and paths, through puddles and walkways. Escort dashingly rushed teenage girls on fine horses.
A motorcycle for a teenager in the village of Old Believers is a matter of pride, passion and necessity. As befits the boys, with the dexterity of circus performers, they demonstrated to the visiting photographer all the skills of driving a two-wheeled motor miracle. Choduraalyg
In order to get to know each other better, start communication and achieve the necessary level of trust that would allow us to photograph people, we boldly joined the daily work of Old Believer families. They have no time to chat idly on a weekday, but in business, talking is more fun. Therefore, we simply came to the Petenevs in the morning and offered Panfil help. Son Gregory planned to marry, he was building a house, and so the work was found - to caulk the ceiling. Nothing complicated, but painstaking. First, on the other side of the river, along the mountains between the thickets, collect moss, put it in bags and throw it down a steep slope. Then we take them by boat to the construction site. Now upstairs, and here clay must be fed in buckets and moss is hammered into the cracks between the logs, covering the top with clay. We work briskly, the brigade is large: the five older children of the Petenevs and three of us, travelers. And younger kids are around, watching and trying to help-participate. We communicate at work, we get to know them, they get to know us. Children are curious, they are interested in everything: how potatoes are grown in big cities, and where we get milk at home, do all the guys go to boarding schools, how far do we live. Question after question, some you find it difficult to answer, and this is understandable: our worlds are so different. Indeed, for children, Saryg-Sep, the regional center, is another planet. And for us, city dwellers, the taiga is an unknown land with its subtleties of nature hidden from the ignorant gaze.
With Pavel Bzhitskikh, who invited us to visit, we met in Maly Choduraalyg, where we went with the children on Sunday. The path to it on Ok-Chara is not close - nine kilometers along the rocky, forested shore of the Small Yenisei. Zaimka of two courtyards impresses with its fortress and economy. The high rise from the river did not create difficulties with water - here and there, right in the yards, a lot of springs hit, and transparent water is supplied to the gardens through wooden gutters. She's cold and delicious.
Inside, the house surprised: two rooms, a prayer room and a kitchenette have preserved the appearance and decoration of the monastic community that was once here. Whitewashed walls, wicker rugs, linen curtains, home-made furniture, earthenware - all the nuns' household was natural, they did not communicate with the world and did not take anything from the outside. Pavel collected and saved the household items of the community, and now he shows them to the guests. Extreme tourists float along Kaa-Khem, sometimes they drop in here, Pavel even built a separate house and a bathhouse so that people could stay with him and relax on the route.
He told us about the life and charter of the Old Believer monks. About prohibitions and sins. About envy and anger. The latter is an insidious sin, anger multiplies with anger and accumulates in the soul of a sinner, and it is difficult to fight it, because even slight annoyance is also anger. Envy is not a simple sin, from envy and pride, and anger, and deception breed. Paul spoke about the importance of reading prayers and repenting. And to take on a fast, both calendar and secretly taken, so that nothing would prevent the soul from praying and becoming more deeply aware of its sin.
Not only severity reigns in the souls of the Old Believers. Paul also spoke about forgiveness, about peacefulness towards other religions, about freedom of choice for his children and grandchildren: “When they grow up, they will go to study, whoever wants to. They will go to the world. God willing, our ancient Orthodox faith will not be forgotten. Someone will return, with age, more often they think about the soul. ”
From ordinary community members, not monks, the outside world is not forbidden, they take the Old Believers and the achievements of civilization, which help in work. Motors are used, guns. I saw their tractor, even solar panels. To buy, they earn money by selling the products of their labor to the laity.
Paul read to us selected chapters of John Chrysostom, translating from Old Church Slavonic. I chose them so that you listen with bated breath. I remember the seal of the Antichrist. Pavel explained in his own way that, for example, all official documents registering a person are his seal. This is how the Antichrist wants to take control of all of us: “In America, every person is already going to have some kind of electric chips sewn under the skin so that he cannot hide from the Antichrist anywhere.”
From the "museum" he led us to the summer kitchen, treated us to mushrooms, smoked taimen, fresh bread and special homemade wine made with birch sap instead of water. When we left, we bought a young turkey from Pavel and plucked him until late at night, laughing at our incompetence.
We met the Popov children from Maly Choduraalyg on the day of their arrival at the playground. Curiosity led them to the tents every morning. They chirped merrily, asking questions non-stop. Communication with these smiling children gave a charge of warmth and joy for the whole day. And one morning the children came running and, on behalf of their parents, invited us to visit.
On the approach to the Popovs, fun - the younger three found the blackest puddle with liquid mud, enthusiastically jumping in it and looking for something. Laughing mother Anna meets us: “Have you seen such grimy ones? Nothing, I heated the water, we’ll wash it!”
Children, already seven, the Popovs do not just love, they understand them. The house is bright from smiles, and Athanasius began to build a new one - more space for the guys. Children themselves are taught, they do not want to send them to a distant boarding school, where there will be no parental warmth.
Over the treat, we quickly got into a conversation, as if some invisible wave began to play with consonance and gave birth to lightness and trust between us.
The Popovs work a lot, the older children help. The economy is strong. They themselves carry products to sell in the area. With the money earned, they bought a tractor and a Japanese outboard motor. A good motor is important here: on the Small Yenisei, dangerous rapids, if an unreliable old one fails, you can die. And the river both feeds and waters, it is also a way of communication with other villages. In summer they ride on a boat, and in winter they ride tractors and UAZs on ice.
Here, in a distant village, people are not alone - they communicate and correspond with Old Believers from all over Russia, they receive a newspaper of the old faith from Nizhny Novgorod.
But they are trying to minimize communication with the state, they refused pensions, benefits and benefits. But contact with the authorities cannot be completely avoided - you need rights to a boat and a tractor, all sorts of technical inspections, permits for guns. At least once a year, but you have to go for papers.
The Popovs treat everything responsibly. Athanasius had a case in his youth. He served in the army in the early 1980s in Afghanistan as an armored personnel carrier driver. Suddenly, trouble struck: the brakes of a heavy car failed, an officer died. At first, the situation was defined as an accident, but then high officials inflated it and the guy was given three years in a penal colony. The commanders, regimental and battalion, trusted Athanasius and sent him to Tashkent without an escort. Imagine: a young guy comes to the gates of the prison, knocks and asks to let him serve his term. Later, the same commanders secured his transfer to a colony in Tuva, closer to home.
We talked with Anna and Athanasius. About life here and in the world. On the connection between the Old Believer communities in Russia. About relations with the world and the state. About the future of children. We left late, with a good light in our souls.
The next morning we were heading home - the short trip was coming to an end. Warmly said goodbye to Marfa Sergeevna: "Come, another time I will settle in the house, I will make room, because they have become like relatives."
For many hours on the way home, in boats, cars, planes, I thought, trying to comprehend what I saw and heard: what did not coincide with the initial expectations? Sometime in the 1980s, I read Vasily Peskov's fascinating essays from the Taiga Dead End series in Komsomolskaya Pravda about an amazing family of Old Believers who had gone deep into the Siberian taiga from people. The articles were kind, as were other stories by Vasily Mikhailovich. But the impression of the taiga recluses remained as of poorly educated and wild people, shunning modern man and afraid of any manifestations of civilization.
The novel "Hop" by Alexei Cherkasov, read recently, increased the fear that it would be difficult to get to know each other and communicate, and it would be impossible to take pictures at all. But hope lived in me, and I decided to go.
That is why it turned out to be so unexpected to see simple people with inner dignity. Carefully preserving their traditions and history, living in harmony with themselves and nature. Hardworking and rational. Peaceful and independent. They gave me warmth and joy of communication.
I took something from them, learned something, thought about something.
It is populated predominantly by Russians. Here, in the upper reaches of the river, in the remote taiga, in the second half of the 19th century, the Old Believers fled from the royal and church persecutions in search of the unknown country "Belovodie".
Constantly persecuted, the Old Believers were forced to leave all the way up the Yenisei. New settlements were laid in the river valley, where there was at least a tiny piece of land for plowing. Therefore, historically, all the villages were strung on a thread of Kaa-Khem. It is here, in the upper reaches of the Small Yenisei, that the life, way of life and traditions of the Russian Old Believers, whom our team of travelers decided to get acquainted with, have been preserved in their original form.
In two weeks, by car, boat and on foot, we traveled 1200 km to reach the most remote villages in the upper reaches of Kaa-Khem: Erzhey, Upper Shivey, Uzhep, Choduralyg, Ok-Chara.
Photo: Natalia Sudets / websiteThe first stop on our way was the Old Believer village of Erzhey, or rather the tourist base of the same name a couple of kilometers from it. The owner of the camp site, Nikolai Vladimirovich Siorpas, took us to the other side of the Small Yenisei and placed us comfortably in wooden houses on the river bank. Here we spent a couple of days, waiting for the rain to stop and the road to dry out, and at the same time sleeping off after a daily drive by car from Abakan airport through Kyzyl, Saryg-Sep to Erzhey.
In order not to waste time, our team visited the village, where the locals, after getting to know us, willingly sold their own products: pickled mushrooms, homemade milk, bread. To be honest, half a jar of mushrooms, to the delight of the hostess, was eaten by us right there on the porch, they turned out to be very tasty.
On the morning of the third day, Nikolai and I crossed back to the mainland, plunged into the UAZ-“loaf” and headed east across the pass to meet with the Verkhovskys, as they call the Old Believers in the upper reaches of the river, distinguished by a particularly strict way of life. 40 kilometers of a logging road soaked with rain - and we are at the Upper Shivey lodge.
Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website
We met the head of the estate, Pyotr Sasin, a strong man with a bushy beard, at the entrance to the field, where he and his fellow villagers supervised the harvesting of hay.
- You live well! - Nikolai shouted to him from the window with an emphasis on the second "o". I brought you helpers!
- Can they throw the seed? Peter answered. “If you didn’t hold the pitchfork in your hands, then it’s better if they don’t interfere, we need to manage before sunset.”
Having received permission to participate in the common cause, we hurried to unload things on the outskirts of the lodge by the river and returned to the field, hiding the cameras in our backpacks so as not to frighten our new acquaintances.
They didn't let us in to the haystack, the work was in full swing there. We were “given the go-ahead” to collect the remains of hay in the field, which the horse harnessed with a rake could not pick up. An hour of work in full force in the company of curious children - and all the dry blades of grass from the ground were collected. It was possible to take a break in anticipation of a new task. We carefully took out cameras from our backpacks, took a couple of shots and showed the result to the little ones. The experience turned out to be successful - we found a common language with the younger generation.
Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website
The next morning was the feast of the Transfiguration, Sasin invited us into the house to talk and taste the berry mash. Dishes for the worldly are separate. They don’t treat their Old Believers, otherwise they become worldly, they will have to be removed from the house. According to the calendar - fasting, so there is nothing meat on the table, only potatoes and mushrooms, and talk about life.
Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website
Peter and his wife Ekaterina moved to Shivey from the regional center in 1999. He is a hereditary Old Believer in the fourth generation. His great-grandfather traveled half the country, from the Far East to Tuva, in search of a secluded place to preserve the faith. Peter himself in the Soviet years worked as a forester in the Forestry, but after the collapse of the country, he finally decided to leave the world and officials. He founded a small estate on the site of a settlement that died out in the middle of the last century, registered the land, started a farm, and breeds dogs and horses. I even tried once to bring out a rare breed of horse "golden". But twice during his departures to the village, the herds were taken away by newcomers.
Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website
The three daughters of the Sasins live in the village and send their grandchildren for the summer. Children poke their nose into everything, strive to help in everything, master the instrument. Despite the departure from everything worldly, Sasin, as a good business executive, although he lives by his own work, does not disdain to use the benefits of civilization. In addition to the tractor that worked yesterday in the fields and the motorcycle standing near the barn, we note solar panels on the wall of the house. There are only four of them, but the charge is enough for a separator and a VCR for grandchildren. Anything that fits into the concept of sustainable use is allowed. Hence the Japanese outboard motors for everyone whose zaimka stands on the shore. Without a good motor, you can’t go anywhere: you can’t go fishing or go to a village tens of kilometers away. And there is a need. You can't get away from the world at all.
A few days later, Sasin and his son-in-law took us to the shore of Kaa-Khem to the crossing near the village of Uzhep, hidden behind the island. We are 15 kilometers upstream to the remote village of Choduraalyg. The way there is only by water, so Peter called the boat from Uzhep with three shots from a gun into the air.
Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website
Once upon a time, the large Old Believer village of Choduraalyg was deserted by the efforts of the authorities by the 70s of the last century. Only the old nuns remained to live in a small monastery. But after the collapse of the USSR, old people came here from the city and the lower villages, wanting to keep the faith, and their children and grandchildren began to move after them. Many children were born here already.
Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website
In Choduraalyg people live according to the charter of the Old Believers, without a passport, residence permit, school and everything else “devilish”. Knowledge in the form of codes of rules of the old, pre-Nikonian, Scriptures is received at Sunday school and from the caretaker of the monastic cell at the Ok-Chara lodge from Pavel Bzhitsky. Many cannot read and write. Yes, they don't need it. The only children with three classes behind them were 23-year-old Grigory Pletenev and his younger sister Natalya, children of Panfil, the father of the largest family in the district.
Panfil has 12 children. One eldest daughter married in a neighboring region, the second went to a monastery. Grisha is the last of the children who left the lodge for the city. And his five younger sisters and four brothers have never come into contact with the big world, except for rafting tourists, who pass up to twenty groups a day in the summer.
Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website
With tourists, the Old Believers have a small business in the form of selling milk, medicinal herbs, mash, bread, eggs and other products. But the main trade goes with Kyzyl, where in the summer by boat, and in the autumn, when the ice rises, they take out goods and hunting preparations. Boat motors, hunting rifles, cartridges are brought back. Something that the Old Believers cannot do without. 
Photo: Natalia Sudets / website
From the children, the rumor about alien worldly people spread throughout all the zaimkas in a matter of hours. They already knew about us and met some with open interest, some with extreme caution.
During the expedition, we met six families of Old Believers, lived side by side with them and actively participated in their daily hard work: we helped with hay harvesting, caught fish, guarded cattle, milked cows, picked berries, brushwood, moss, participated in the construction of a house .
Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website Photo: Natalia Sudets / website
Due to the peculiarities of faith and culture, the historically always persecuted masters of the taiga did not immediately make contact. It was not always possible to melt the ice of distrust, but when it did, the townspeople were received warmly and cordially. Two weeks flew by. And when it was time to go home, we were surprised to find that the Old Believers, distrustful at first, saw us off with sadness, providing us with gifts and good wishes for the journey.
The liturgical reform of Patriarch Nikon in the 17th century led to a schism in the Church and the persecution of dissidents. The bulk of the Old Believers came to Tuva at the end of the 19th century. Then this land belonged to China, which protected the Old Believers from repression. They sought to settle in deserted and inaccessible corners, where no one would oppress them for their faith.
Before leaving their old places, the Old Believers sent scouts. They were sent light, supplying only the bare necessities: horses, provisions, clothing. Then the settlers set off in large families, usually in winter along the Yenisei, with all their livestock, household goods and children. Often people died, falling into polynyas. Those who were lucky enough to get there alive and well carefully chose a place for settlement so that they could be engaged in agriculture, arable farming, start a garden, etc.
The Old Believers still live in Tuva. For example, Erzhey is the largest Old Believer village in the Kaa-Khem region with a population of over 200 inhabitants. Read more about it in today's post...
It takes a long time to get to the village. At first we sawed 200 km from Kyzyl. On the way, there are a lot of banners reminiscent of a high-ranking fellow countryman Sergei Shoigu:
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We passed by small villages. Almost all lack such things as cafes or convenience stores, but there is Lenin:
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Village football stadium. Apparently cows are used to "cut" the grass on the field:
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They crossed the river. The cars were sent on a ferry, they themselves sat on the boats. Half an hour went upstream:
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A river with a very fast current
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The views are very picturesque. Mountains, greenery, rare clouds:
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Our team:
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Fisherman on the shore
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Finally arrived:
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At first glance, the Old Believer village was no different from thousands of ordinary villages in Russia:
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At a second glance, too, nothing special was noticed. Village and village.
The only thing that reminded me of a special place was the strict rules. You cannot shoot inside the house. You cannot record speech on a voice recorder. For some reason, the Old Believers are catastrophically afraid of the word "interview" and everything related to mass information:
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Katerina, mistress of the house, 24 years old. By the way, they don’t mind being photographed on the street. Her family came after the war from the Urals. Then there was a terrible famine, and there were legends that it was here that almost the promised land was full of prosperity:
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Son. The Old Believers do not really want their children to receive an education, since no one returns home after studying at the institute. It’s better without a profession, but next to me, with my family. To avoid incest, wives are taken from neighboring villages. Divorces are not accepted, the principle of "endure-fall in love" is practiced:
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We were invited to the house, fed with okroshka on local kvass, which tastes more like water, and a fish pie. The cake was peculiar: seven centimeters high on a thin dough, completely filled with lenok. I took a bite and realized I made a mistake. The fish was not only with bones, it was with a backbone. Washed down fish bones with lemon balm.
Nevertheless, the reception left a warm impression. We were allowed to rent a garden. They grow everything themselves, including watermelons and melons:
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Homestead with cans:
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A small car of a cub, with which he drives around the yard:
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Dad's big car, on which he drives to Kyzyl once a week. Carries milk, sour cream and cottage cheese for sale. With the proceeds, the father of the family buys flour and food. Still, despite the remoteness, the hermitage of the Old Believers is very conditional - their way of life is already woven into the neighboring society:
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In the next post I will tell you about the salt lake Dus-Khol. Stay Tuned!
The upper reaches, the valley of the Old Believers, is the sumon of Sizim, there are four settlements in it: the village of Sizim, the Arbans of Erzhey, Ust-Uzhep, Katazy, with a dozen small towns (farms). The number of sketes is inaccurate. According to the papers, there are 228 households in the sumon, more than 800 inhabitants, estimated at about a thousand Russian people, Old Believers of the chapel consent.
From the Usinsky tract (the beautiful road Abakan-Kyzyl) you go to the southeast, and a little more than a hundred miles from the capital of Tuva - though intermittently, dotted, but asphalt to Ust-Buren. They sat down past with traces of a vanished civilization: against the backdrop of wooden huts inhabited by people - white-stone cowsheds with tall windows, now broken, indispensable Lenin, here he is in a hat with earflaps (the temperature range is one hundred degrees from the absolute maximum to the minimum, minus 60), honor boards with the main countryman - Sergei Shoigu. Further roads are conditional. There are none in spring and autumn. In the summer, you might be lucky if the gold miners' grader passes again, which happens; along the way - ferry crossings. From December to March, the winter road is wedged. There were no roads to remote settlements and sketes. Now they go there only by boats - and these are rapids, shivers, rifts, clamps, cheeks. In winter, snowmobile. They get to their own taiga in the same way: each family in the taiga has a hereditary plot of tens of square kilometers, where the head of the family hunts in winter. The plots are far from the villages, next to which the animals are not beaten, the forest is not cut down. And next to the winter hut, trees are not felled - they will move deep into the thicket. You will not notice the hut from the river, although they are standing on the shore. The trails are barely visible. The same - sketes. They go to the elders and old women, but they do not trample the paths.
They say: the higher the Yenisei, the stronger the faith. You can’t check, but what you see with your own eyes is that the higher up the Yenisei, the worse the roads are, until they disappear altogether. But it is a mistake to derive an inverse relationship between the strength of faith and the accessibility of the world. From the world to the desert - a secluded area - here they leave consciously, first faith, then the skete. Hermitage here is an ideal, a "spiritual paradise."
How many years are left for an invisible country with alternative Russians?
iron stream
Author's photoThe 410-kilometer railway arm Kuragino-Kyzyl (and further to the coal mines of Elegest) for the export of minerals from Tuva has been talked about for many years. The dwindling Kuzbass is called upon to replace the Ulug-Khem basin. And those who are interested in the road are no less than those who do not accept and are afraid of it (but who ever was interested in the opinion of the natives). The Russian government approved the project in 2007. And the road should have been open more than once. In 2012, according to the Strategy for the Development of Russian Railway Transport until 2030. According to a later government plan - in 2016.
In June 2011, Ruslan Baisarov became the owner of the Elegestinsky coking coal deposit, and Moscow indicated its readiness to get down to business. By that time, Putin had not yet caught the famous 20-kilo pike in Tuva, but he was already dragging graylings and lenks here with the Prince of Monaco, after which he shared: “I have never seen such a gorgeous, powerful nature anywhere. I do not want to say any high-flown words, but this is a very strong impression. I have been to many places and seen many things, but I have never seen anything like this before.” Nevertheless, in December 2011, Putin drives the first golden spike into the first sleeper.
Since then, the horse has not fallen down, in addition to that crutch, only one kilometer of tracks was built near Kyzyl. Last year, the Eastern Forum announced that construction would resume in 2018, the government approved another plan, and a concession agreement with investors was signed at a meeting with Dvorkovich. This year, in May, Shoigu announced that the military was ready to take on the construction.
While long trucks and heavy trucks are moving from Tuva along the Usinsky tract, they are transporting its subsoil to the microdistrict (in polypropylene bags up to 3 tons with slings). This iron stream, like the Yenisei, consists of two tributaries: Elegestinsky high-quality coal and ore from Todzha, where in 2015 the Chinese Lunsing launched a mining and processing plant. This is on the Big Yenisei (Biy-Khem), where the Old Believers are present dispersed and disappear. The Chinese were given the Kyzyl-Tashtyg deposit of polymetallic ores ( see "New" No. 134 of 2012) - 200 km northeast of Kyzyl, Academician Obruchev Ridge. There is now an industrial zone: near the Ak-Khem, a tributary of the Greater Yenisei, hundreds of hectares of cedar forest have been cut down almost on the shore, and a quarry has been dug in the bald patch. This is an open pit mine. There is also a processing plant with a capacity of 1 million tons of ore per year. Zinc, lead, copper concentrates. Also in the ore are cadmium, selenium, barium, gold, silver.
Vakum: “They rake everything: earth, tree roots, grass, trees. What they dug up, they bring to their place for processing. They dug it out, now they are transporting the ore. Everything is there in this breed, the main thing is the necessary metal for phones, computers. At one time, the Chinese did not allow the tax office to visit them. So the helicopter with security forces landed on their roof.” (About the helicopter with OMON, it seems to be true. Until June 20, fishing in the Yenisei basin has been banned from time immemorial, but some Moscow redneck in the Verkhovye caught lenks with Red Book taimen. They were taken out with flasks and barrels. They were stopped: two thousand from the snout and go. Yeah We are Moscow! We can pay off you grubby ones? And so we feed you. In Kyzyl, the OMON and TV cameras were waiting, they put on full shoes, filed a case, and immediately burned the fish.)
Longxing is a subsidiary of China's largest mining holding Zijin Mining Group with a sad background and a reputation as the largest polluter and poisoner inside China, scandals haunt it abroad, from Peru to Kyrgyzstan.
In the Upper River, China was a bug-buyer before World War II, now it dictates prices for a stream of musk deer, bear paws and bile, lynx skins. Vakum: “Well, we don’t pass by, we catch it all, but we don’t use something ourselves. The same bear bile - more romantic, of course, than boar, but it is the same. And we grow these wild boars, they run around the village, they eat the same roots and grass that bears do.”
For more than a hundred years, the old believer system of management in Verkhovye has not violated natural cycles and symbioses, the number of animals is stable, no one takes it higher than the eyes. Later accession to the USSR, a dissected terrain that impedes roads, allowed the entire isolated Tuva to remain the most ecologically clean last region of the former Soviet Union, not polluted by industry. Why, there are only a few such territories on the planet that have preserved intact landscapes. And now she is waiting, not believing in her end, the appearance of the road and civilization.
For indigenous communities and ecosystems everywhere and always, from Mongolia to Latin America, from Africa to Transbaikalia, globalization, investment and Chinese resource companies mean the same thing. Not only Chinese, of course. Ours are no better, gold miners are plowing Tuva, tearing, poisoning the rivers, exactly taking revenge for what, and, for example, Tuva learned about cyanides in detail thanks to a joint venture between the Swedes and Canadians; it's not about the Chinese or Canadians, and not even about Russia, which allows you to behave like this. However, they say that there is something in globalization, backward children from the backyard will finally watch Scooby Doo: “Many are trying to redo everything in this world, they think that this is progress! But there is something that is already beautiful, and there is no need to change it.
What will happen in a particular Verkhovye is approximately clear. Masai with spears walk around Africa. They also live in harmony with nature. Beautiful people, stately, clean, covered with red sheets and slippers cut from tires - thanks to progress. And all their protected rhinos were shot because of the value of the horn in Chinese medicine. Both the local subspecies of the black rhinoceros and the white one that lived nearby were declared extinct. But they did not die out - they were exterminated, it did not help even the fact that the rangers guarding the last animals fired at strangers without warning. And those subspecies that are alive roam more and more often already without a horn - it is cut off, putting the animal to sleep, and poachers and environmentalists - in order to save the rhinos.
Bears without paws and musk deer are unlikely to be able to without their jet.
The Verkhovskys are real Indians. They will not go to the amusement of the Chinese with a horn on a bear. But it is unlikely to fight for the sources of the Yenisei. Take off again and leave. There will be a globalized devastated space without them.
Vakum reports: “The Chinese have already made roads in Toju. And do you think Russia will build a railway to the Trans-Siberian Railway? No. Shoigu said: there are three hundred ancient graves on her way. Until we check everything, there will be no road. They check two mounds a year. And Shoigu is already over 60 (years).
But Shoigu has nothing to do with it. What about China. From the Tourism Development Strategy approved by the Tuvan government on December 28, 2017: “In June 2016, the leaders of Mongolia, Russia and China approved the program for creating an economic corridor: Hui AO-Urumqi); Northern Railway Corridor (Kuragino-Kyzyl-Tsagan-Tologoy-Artssur-Ovot-Erdenet-Salkhit-Zamyn-Ude-Erlian-Ulanchab-Zhangjiakou-Beijing-Tianjin)”.
The documents of the trilateral meeting in Tashkent on June 23, 2016 are not so unambiguous, they say “to study and, if economically feasible, start implementing these projects”, but the Tuvan Cabinet of Ministers knows better, its head Kara-ool recently stated that the Asian Development Bank is ready to invest in the Northern Corridor about 3 billion dollars. Tuva and Mongolia just propose to consider it a priority. Meanwhile, in Tuva, all new deposits are being sold.
Minaeus says that he saw Avatar. Life cinema. About them.
Small Yenisei. Chapels. Author's photo Perpendicular
Avtarky Verkhovya is the best practice of self-isolation, import substitution and mobilization economy. And the Verkhovskys do not expect anything from the authorities: neither protection, nor medicine, nor benefits - the dream of United Russia and the government, it would seem. Clone these. They work, multiply, are interested in politics in moderation. They don’t watch TV, it’s bad, but not very much towards America: “They say she is against Russia” (Vakum). Unreliable, of course, is "they say".
Business practices are a gray economy: everything is based on words, personal relationships and guarantees, on concepts, without being legalized. The community property is given in growth to the most skillful, their names do not shine. In terms of methods - the same closed offshore kleptocracy that is at the heart of the rest of Russia. The results are opposite.
No, by the way, the Middle Ages. They could successfully resist this Soviet progress - what if Gagarin, the hydrogen bomb, the Bratsk hydroelectric power station and Uralvagonzavod? Since the 90s, many (desert dwellers subtract) use a lot of things that make everyday life easier; and they have bank cards, and motor drills ...
Chapels settled interspersed throughout the Yenisei and many tributaries. The Soviet Angara radio stations also help to keep in touch - signals are caught along the channel and river terraces, "shelves" and "counters", as they call the developed, plowed, patches of land taken from the taiga and rocks. You can hear the taiga villages up to Igarka. Several years ago, at the request of Larisa Shoigu, the minister's sister, the Krasnoyarsk regional center of the Ministry of Emergency Situations handed over to Verkhovye an army command and staff complex - a radio station on an all-terrain vehicle chassis and six portable devices. This is a permanent connection for 300 km. And then a cell tower and a card payphone were installed in Sizim. And television has come, all of a sudden someone wants it.
The Maasai, holding on to their roots and traditions, sacrifice their most prized goat to make it rain. And then they stare at their cell phones - they look at changes in the weather forecast. And the Old Believers are not here, there is no sturgeon in Vekhovie, much lower - the traps are filming, already guided by GPS.
Well, if not about the technical side, there is no special archaic either. If Russia does everything to ensure that it is shredded and sold like the carcass of an already killed animal. If so trying to merge, sink. If the Christian churches have been brought to talk about the near end of Christianity. Then what, tell me, is more relevant than Verkhovye, in what can there be more sense, if not in its people?
They still don’t have idols, they don’t pray for the king as before, and they don’t recognize him as God’s anointed. All are equal before God. Hence the fundamental impossibility of the existence here of "little people", "cogs", "anchovies" who do not solve anything. Their communities have democracy and the values of humanism.
This means that they are still perpendicular to the state. Not to deal with him is a condition for preserving oneself.
But they are constantly overtaken. Meanwhile, China and the road are external threats, and sometimes they only reflect internal contradictions.
Rapprochement
Tuvans gave their names to many villages and settlements founded by Russian merchants or Old Believers, for example, the district center to which Verkhovye belongs, from Znamenka became Saryg-Sep, but the house for the Old Believer is not the main thing, it will be removed and moved in a moment, rivers are more important, and they call them as of old, or by the first names and surnames of those who live on them. We pass the "river Permyakovs" - 30 km from the mouth of their village Katazy. With the Permyakovs (they are also from the Perm region, like the Vakum clan, they only came later), Vakum and Minei have a lot of common memories. The countdown of events is from Illarion Lvovich, the head of the community: “Grandfather Illarion was still alive.” 9 of his sons are here, and only one surname in the village, the daughters have gone married. Now granddaughters. And the sons have 70 children. Army. Outpost. Just not far from Por-Bazhyn.
But even grandfather Illarion arranged so that Katazy turned from a place of residence into a brand, into a camp site for foreigners and wealthy compatriots. At different times, P. Borodin, Yu. Luzhkov, N. Mikhalkov, S. Shoigu flew here. And many other genera appeared camp sites, giving a good income.
The pioneers named one of the dangerous rapids on Ka-Khem Moscow. Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren found how to make money in Moscow. Wallets fly to the roar of the deer. And in Erzhei itself there is now a regional festival "Singing art and traditional crafts of the Old Believers of Siberia." And in Sizim there is an inter-regional festival of Russian culture.
The two Russias are getting closer. For some Verkhovskys, this is an adaptation to modernity, but in 1912 they were allowed to eat potatoes, and in 1972 - pasta, others see it as a rejection of the foundations and the path to death. “He still ate separately, but he came to drink to us. And on the way back, I didn’t land on the rapids, ”one of the tourists commented on his guide.
Fortress
Now it’s not at all about whether the road is needed. Roads are good, of course. I'm talking about something else, and the chapels are aware: if the world gets a chance to mutilate or destroy some space, so be it. Beautiful, solid, the best - to perish: they will reach the ship's pines and cut them down. But there is an option: you can swear. When they go to bump, large cedars do not beat with a stab. What's the point, don't shake it. The upper reaches are a fortress, such a cedar.
It took a lot. The outflow of Russians from Tuva began back in the 70s of the last century, and before my eyes, in 1992, it was already a mass exodus. An extract from the anamnesis: at first, the Slavs flooded the shrines of the Tuvans, erecting the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station, began to set up factories on their sacred mountains, and the Tuvans could only ride horses and throw knives at KamAZ trucks. Then they undertook to break glass for the Slavs, set fire to houses, along the streets of Kyzyl horsemen clattered in a column of three under yellow banners, demanding independence from Russia. The Russians went to bed, putting their loaded guns to bed, and then moved north through the passes. The upper reaches have also thinned out, but now there are no strife.
Globalization and progress cannot be dealt with. But nothing is predetermined. It did not work out to pump oil on the Syma. Rosatom has been discouraged from mining uranium in the Krasnochikoysky district of Transbaikalia. The gas pipeline did not pass to China through Altai - and they wanted to build it before the "Forces of Siberia", the contract was ready for signing. Everywhere the Old Believers rose together with the autochthons - respectively, the Kets, Buryats, Telengits and other Altai peoples. With shamans, lamas - maybe not together with them, but shoulder to shoulder. And they won. And the Mekran was blown away, cutting down forests on the middle Yenisei, where the chapels live. But the Angara, where there were no Old Believer communities, was mutilated and buried.
Why is that? “Public opinion” may have something to do with it, but its role is not decisive. Unprofitability of megaprojects, corruption as their cause and effect, lack of money, crisis phenomena? Yes, but all this does not explain why the leviathan suddenly opens its jaws. They did not dare to raze the Old Believer cemetery in the center of the Olympic Sochi. There was enough money.
Whether the Verkhovskys will be fenced off with a fence from cattle, whether they will throw nails, whether the mountains will grow up, but in the existing plan to make room for Chinese business and force the Old Believers somewhere in Latin America, adjustments are possible. In the end, there is no such law obliging us around to give up and leave. The Yenisei should begin in the Upper River, and not in Bolivia.