Ust-Tsilma was established by Novgorodians in 1542, in the period when Muscovite Russia was expanding its reach into the subarctic north. The name is geographic: 'Ust' in Russian means 'mouth' — the mouth of the Tsilma River, where it flows into the Pechora. The Pechora is one of the major rivers of the Russian north, running over 1,800 kilometers from the Urals to the Barents Sea. Ust-Tsilma sits roughly in the middle portion of its course, far enough north to be at the edge of the taiga's transition into tundra, remote enough that reaching it has always required real intention. The village today has a population of around 5,000, a number that makes it a significant settlement by the sparse standards of the Komi Republic's northern territories.

The Old Believers who settled here in the 17th and 18th centuries were not simply practicing their faith in exile. They were preserving a complete cultural world — liturgical practices, musical traditions, folk art, ceremonial clothing, and the intricate embroidered costumes that mark the Russian North as distinct from any other regional tradition. Cut off from the cultural currents that transformed Russian life in the 19th and 20th centuries, Ust-Tsilma kept these practices alive. The village is known for its folk culture in a way that attracts researchers and cultural travelers who make the considerable effort to reach it. The old wooden izbas — the traditional log cabins that form the village's vernacular architecture — line its streets in substantial numbers, the most tangible evidence of the building traditions the settlers carried north.

Reaching Ust-Tsilma is not easy, and the difficulty is part of its character. The tiny airport has twice-weekly flights to Syktyvkar. The nearest rail station is Irayol, on the Kotlas-Vorkuta line, from which buses run to the village twice a day — but in the off-season, when the Pechora freezes or begins its spring ice-drift, even that connection can be severed. The road between Ukhta and Irayol is practically impassable for cars in warm months. In winter the quality improves, though 'noticeably better' is a relative term at these latitudes. In summer and early autumn, a passenger boat runs three times a week along the Pechora to Naryan-Mar and back, which is both the most practical and the most fitting way to arrive: traveling the river the settlement was built to guard.

Three hotels in the village — one in the New Quarter near the bus station, one by the sports complex, one at the airport — accommodate the visitors who find their way here. What those visitors come for is harder to itemize than what most tourist destinations offer. It is the quality of the place itself: the wooden buildings, the Pechora's wide current, the sense that certain things have been maintained here through sheer geographic stubbornness. The Old Believers chose this location because it was hard to reach. That same quality preserved what they brought. Isolation, in Ust-Tsilma's case, turned out to be a form of cultural protection.