Nazino Island: Stalin's Cannibal Island

The island exists. It sits in the Ob River in western Siberia, six kilometres long and 600 metres wide, flat and forested and unremarkable from the water. Nazino Island is surrounded by river on all sides, which in 1933 meant it was surrounded by an escape route that was also a death sentence — the Ob is wide, cold, and fast in spring. Between May and August of that year, more than 4,000 people died on it. The island has had several names. The name that locals gave it, and that has persisted, is Cannibal Island.

The story was suppressed for over fifty years. The Soviet state did not acknowledge it. The survivors were dispersed. The guards who witnessed it and reported it internally were transferred.

A Communist Party official named Vasily Velichko wrote a detailed account in 1933 and sent it to Moscow; the document was classified and remained hidden until the human rights organisation Memorial uncovered it in 1988. What it described was not a tragic accident of the Gulag system. It was what happened when the system was applied without even minimal competence.

How It Happened

In the early 1930s, Stalin’s government was conducting mass deportations of people classified as socially undesirable: those without internal passports, suspected speculators, petty criminals, and — by the time the programme expanded — essentially anyone who could be swept up in a quota. Between March and July 1933, more than 85,000 people were arrested from Moscow and Leningrad alone under Operation Passport Purge, which targeted anyone without proper identification documents. Many were ordinary urban workers. Some were homeless.

Some were recent arrivals from the countryside fleeing famine. The regime categorised them all as threats to social order.

The plan was to deport them to labour settlements in Siberia, where they would be put to work in forestry and agriculture and become productive citizens of the Soviet project. The plan required food, tools, shelter, and administrative infrastructure at the receiving sites. None of these had been arranged. Officials in Moscow dispatched tens of thousands of deportees before the infrastructure existed to receive them.

The Barges Arrive

Two barges arrived at Nazino Island on May 18, 1933, carrying between 5,070 and 6,144 prisoners depending on which records are consulted. The island had no permanent structures, no tools, no food stores, and no shelter of any kind. Guards were present, but they were there to prevent escape, not to provide organisation. Each deportee received a small amount of flour — not bread, not cooked food, but raw flour — and nothing else.

It rained. The temperature dropped. At least 27 people died during the barge journey; nearly 300 died the first night on the island. The combination of cold, hunger, disease, and exhaustion killed quickly. At peak mortality, up to 40 people died per day. Those who survived the first week ate bark, grass, and whatever could be found in the river shallows. Those who survived longer began doing what humans have done in conditions of extreme starvation throughout recorded history.

Velichko’s 1933 report described what the guards witnessed: attacks on other prisoners for flesh, bodies found mutilated, people killed for food rather than simply eaten after death. He named specific perpetrators and described specific incidents. The report is clinical in its language and does not appear to have been written for rhetorical effect — it was an internal administrative document meant to describe a situation that had become administratively unmanageable.

After Thirteen Weeks

Survivors were evacuated after approximately thirteen weeks. Of the 5,000-plus people deposited on the island in May, fewer than 2,000 left alive in August. The dead were buried in mass graves — up to 31 were later identified on the island. Approximately 80 people were subsequently arrested and tried for crimes committed on the island. Twenty-three received death sentences for looting and assault; at least 11 were sentenced specifically for cannibalism.

The guards who committed their own abuses — sexual violence, arbitrary execution, theft of the flour rations — were largely not prosecuted. Velichko’s report reached Stalin’s immediate circle. The response was to classify it, transfer Velichko, and continue the deportation programme elsewhere with minor procedural adjustments.

What the Memorial Found

The human rights organisation Memorial began documenting Soviet-era atrocities in the late Soviet period, working from declassified archives and survivor testimonies. Nazino was among the cases it reconstructed in detail. The organisation was forcibly liquidated by Russian courts in 2021, following years of pressure from Russian authorities. Its archives were transferred to other institutions. The Nazino documentation survived.

The island is accessible today. It is not a memorial site. There are no monuments, no signs, and no official acknowledgement of what happened there. The mass graves are where they were left. The Ob continues to run past it on both sides. The island remains flat, forested, and unremarkable from the water.

Key Takeaways

• Over 5,000 people were deposited on Nazino Island in May 1933 with only raw flour — no food, shelter, tools, or medical provision — as part of Stalin’s mass deportation programme.
• More than 4,000 died within thirteen weeks from cold, starvation, disease, and violence; up to 40 per day at peak mortality.
• Cannibalism was documented in real time by Soviet internal reports; the information reached Moscow and was classified rather than acted upon.
• Communist Party official Vasily Velichko wrote a detailed account in 1933; it remained suppressed until Memorial uncovered it in 1988, fifty-five years later.
• The island has no memorial, no official recognition, and no signage. The mass graves remain where they were left.