On the course of the Obi River in Siberia is a sliver of land known as Nazino Island, Cannibals island. This area, far away from civilization, has a horrible past.
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin deported thousands of individuals who opposed this rule at the beginning of the 1930s. Nazino became known as Cannibals Island because it was desolate and uninhabited.
The incident that gave Nazino Island its dreadful moniker started in the 1930s. According to the History Collections, the Soviet Union was through terrible purges when Stalin killed people he saw as a threat to the regime.
Stalin eliminates his adversaries
Opponents from the military or even the Communist Party were most frequently involved. Stalin, however, wished to eliminate everyone who may threaten the social order he wanted to establish.
He started looking for a means of getting rid of the groupings of people he thought were harmful. He ultimately decided on the possibility of mass expulsions to the Siberian taiga.
These political outcasts had the tiniest opportunity of challenging tyrannical rule because they were thousands of kilometers away from civilization. They were too preoccupied to survive right now.
Millions of individuals were deported to Siberia under Stalin’s rule, frequently for frivolous or made-up offenses like being stopped by the police without identification.
Deportees reach the island of the cannibals
On Nazino, an island just 600 meters broad and 3.2 kilometers long, 5,000 deportees landed in May 1933. The authorities at the time lacked the tools or expertise to handle such a sizable deportee population.
The deportees were expected to be familiar with the island’s geography and use it as a labor camp. The inmates were left on Nazino until the authorities decided what to do with them because the camp management had not received any tools.
The island was a deserted bog when the inmates first arrived. Because there was no structure, the convicts had nowhere to seek refuge from inclement weather.
Famine
The situation deteriorated when an additional 1,200 convicts landed on the island on May 27. Since there was nothing to eat on Nazino, the government began bringing flour.
However, the inmates were so hungry when they tried to distribute the flour to the populace on the first morning that they camped out on the guards doing it. Later, the latter began to fire into the crowd.
The authorities decided to have the inmates pick up the flour through agents after the same thing happened the following day. They were brigadiers, small-time offenders who abused their position of authority to harm other prisoners.
The lack of ovens on the island prevented the inmates from baking bread even if they received flour. So they combined the flour and water, then consumed it uncooked. As a result, many people developed dysentery and passed away.
They consumed one another to survive
On the island, people started passing away after a few weeks. Nazino descended into chaos. The convicts started killing each other since they had no food or regulations to protect the weak. Cannibalism was a common practice.
An eyewitness from Cannibal Island had the following to say:
“Kostia Venikov, a young guard, was stationed on the island. He was courting a lovely girl who had been sent there. Defend her.
He had to take a little break one day. People captured the girl, tied her to a tree, and chopped off her breasts, muscles, and everything edible…
They needed food since they were starving. The girl was still alive when Kostia arrived. She had lost too much blood for him to try to save her.”
There is no way out of Nazino
Deportees started constructing rafts to leave the island. However, the rafts quickly sank, and the people on board perished. Near the shore, hundreds of corpses began to float.
However, those who made it across the river either perished in the ruthless Siberian tundra or were pursued by the soldiers. Only 2,000 of the 6,200 individuals brought to cannibal island had survived as of June.
The survivors were relocated to a nearby work camp later that month when many perished due to the appalling conditions.
