Anchorage Daily News

KACHEMAK SELO -- The young fisherman's body came down the treacherous switchback trail in a snowstorm Sunday. Andrian Reutov completed his last trip home from the fishing grounds on Russian Christmas Eve.

For several decades, the men of the three Old Believer communities at the head of Kachemak Bay have made their living from the sea. Lately, the commercial-fishing routine has included longlining for cod in the Gulf of Alaska. Several dozen Russian boats dock in Kodiak during the winter so their crews can make frequent trips home via charter flights.

As fishing communities, the Old Believer settlements near Homer know what it is like to have family members never return. But the crash of a charter flight in Kodiak Saturday, which took the lives of five local fishermen, was something new.

"There was tragedies all along, but nothing like this. This was big," said Sergei Reutov, a former mayor of Kachemak Selo, the village along the tidal flats at the head of the bay. "They were all coming home for Christmas."

Orthodox Christmas will be marked today with long early-morning church services in all three communities: Voznesenka on the bluff at the end of East End Road, 23 miles from Homer; Razdolna, another three miles beyond; and Kachemak Selo, at the foot of the icy switchback road negotiated in winter by trucks with chains.

The communities were established by different family groups in the early 1980s when conservative Old Believers split from the area's original settlement, at Nikolaevsk near Anchor Point. Today, the combined population at the head of the bay is well over 500, said Sergei Reutov, who is not closely related to Andrian.

The Old Believers are an Orthodox sect that split from the Russian Church in the 17th century over matters of religious practice. Spread around the world today, they tend to live in isolated, tightly-knit communities, speaking Russian at home and rejecting certain trappings of the modern world while embracing others.

The Kachemak Bay communities lost two pairs of brothers to the air crash in Kodiak.

Zahary Martushev, 25, and Iosif Martushev, 15, lived near Kachemak Selo but outside the village. Iosif, also known as Joe, was in ninth grade in the village school.

Stefan Basargin, 36, and his brother Pavel Basargin, 30, lived in Razdolna. Both died in the crash. Stefan had a large family, villagers said. A third Basargin brother and a cousin were among the four survivors.

Andrian Reutov, a Cook Inlet driftnet fisherman in summer, was the youngest son in a family of six boys and four girls. He was 22 and got married last May. Andrian had recently converted his boat for longlining cod and was fishing late into the season to pay off his investment, said an older brother, Alexander Reutov.

Alexander, also a fisherman, said he flew out of Kodiak two hours before his brother's flight Saturday. The airplane that dropped him off in Homer and went back for Andrian was the one that crashed, he said.

On Sunday, as snowy darkness closed in early and drifts deepened in the road outside the Reutov house in Kachemak Selo, Alexander Reutov recalled his brother as hardworking but outgoing, fun and well-liked throughout the fishing fleet.

"He was the family favorite," said a sister-in-law, Nadia Reutov. "He was always, always smiling."

Sunday was a day of fasting in the villages. The fast will end today, after the morning Christmas service. Tuesday will see another pre-dawn holy day gathering in the churches. The funerals will be held Tuesday, Sergei Reutov said, after the regular services.

After they are buried, the dead will be remembered in prayers for 40 days, he said.

Find Tom Kizzia online at adn.com/contact/tkizzia. Old Believer villages near Homer

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