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podcast transcript
In 1933, deep in Siberia, thousands of people were abandoned on a remote island with little to live for.
They had no shelter, no tools, and little food. What followed was chaos and starvation, descending into one of the darkest events of the Soviet era.
It was not just a humanitarian disaster. It was the result of a system that treated humans as expendable.
In this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily, learn about the Naccino tragedy and why it remains a warning about the consequences of unchecked power.
To understand the tragedy of Nazzino, we must place it in the broader context of the early 1930s under Joseph Stalin. The Soviet Union was in the midst of forced collectivization, rapid industrialization, and widespread famine.
In early 1933, Soviet officials, including security chief Genrikh Yagoda and Gulag administrator Matvei Berman, proposed an ambitious plan to deport up to a million kulaks (rich farmers) to Siberia and Kazakhstan, where they would establish “special settlements” and become self-sufficient agricultural workers.
Previously, Berman and Yagoda had achieved relative success by deporting two million kulaks and agricultural workers to the same region. The difference between the first and second settlement attempts was that the Soviet Union had far fewer resources for the second settlement due to the famine it was facing.
The original plan was to bring in kulaks from the agricultural regions of the West, but this failed. Instead of accommodating the kulaks, the Soviet Union eventually expelled ordinary citizens from major cities such as Moscow and Leningrad.
The regime was attempting to reorganize society by eliminating what it deemed ‘socially harmful elements’. These included criminals as well as vagabonds, former merchants, peasants fleeing the famine, and even ordinary city dwellers without proper internal passports, a system introduced in 1932 to control population movements.
These people were not necessarily political dissidents. They were socially undesirable individuals that Stalin wanted to eliminate.
The implementation of this plan quickly fell into disarray. Within days of the program being approved with minimal preparation, thousands of people were arrested and deported. Many had no agricultural experience whatsoever.
Those rounded up were first sent to temporary camps in cities such as Tomsk, Omsk and Achinsk, where the prisoners were transported by barge.
In May 1933, approximately 6,000 to 6,700 deportees were transported to a small swampy island in the Ob River known as Nacino. The original plan called for about 25,000 prisoners to be moved, but only a small fraction of them were actually moved.
Nazino was inhabited by a small group of indigenous people known as Ostyak. But there were very few of them, and by all accounts the area was completely isolated.
They arrived on the island with few supplies. Despite the goal of making the group self-sufficient by cultivating the land, the exiles were provided with little food, clothing, tools, or shelter materials. Even this basic preparation was not enough to survive in the cruel Siberian wilderness.
The first group to reach the island became sick and malnourished from the voyage. Dozens of people had already died, and when they arrived on the island, a third of the group could not stand. This situation has become even worse.
The weather in May in Nagino was terrible. The island was battered by snow, frost and freezing rain, leaving many people exposed. In a desperate attempt to stay warm, some people fell asleep too close to the campfire and died from burns during the night.
When the prisoners saw Najno Island and its swampy terrain, they knew there was no possibility of cultivating the land. There were only 20 tons of flour and few supplies for the more than 6,000 people sent to the island. To put it simply, it’s about 9 pounds (4 kg) per person.
Order on the island broke down almost immediately, with gangs forming and fights breaking out over how to share the scarce supplies of flour.
Those who secured limited supplies of flour still suffered. Many people have not taken steps to prepare their flour. Instead, they ate it dried or mixed with water.
This had two dangerous consequences. People who ate dried flour often choked. Dysentery was common when mixed with water. Hunger, disease, and despair came quickly, and people began to become more desperate.
People began trying to escape from the island, but it wasn’t easy. The guards, despite being completely inexperienced and mostly new recruits without shoes or uniforms, did their best to create an atmosphere of fear and danger as they left the camp.
Those who managed to get past the guards attempted to build a raft to escape the island. But these rafts were primitive. Many people fell and hundreds of bodies washed up on the island’s shores.
When the rafts of defectors succeeded in crossing the river, the guards hunted them for fun. To survive the hunt, the escapees will have to survive in the taiga, an incredibly harsh environment. For this reason, it is assumed that all escapees who did not drown in rivers and were not hunted for sport died in natural disasters.
The situation for those remaining on the island became increasingly desperate. Those left behind in Nacino were mainly from the city. That is, because they had no agricultural experience, they did not know how to properly clear and cultivate the land.
Due to the flour debacle, the gangs that already existed began terrorizing the island’s weak people for money and food. After killing, the bodies were looted for gold tooth fillings, crowns and other valuables.
The goal of the gangs that committed these murders was to engage in trade to obtain resources such as food and tobacco.
The security guard did nothing to help the situation. Instead, they decided to act callously towards the gangs and enforce their own reign of terror. They extorted the people of the island and executed people for the most minor crimes to maintain order.
Their orders based on fear caused even professionals posted to the island, such as doctors, to fear for their lives despite being promised protection.
The prisoners’ food situation has deteriorated significantly. For many people, their only choice for food was the people around them. Violent mobs worked together to hunt and kill the weak to secure food and fresh meat. For them, killing was not for the bathroom, but for the sole purpose of not starving to death.
By the end of May, cannibalism had become widespread throughout the island. Witnesses on the island recalled seeing people tied to trees and having their body parts cut off and cooked. Despite the massacres on the island, the Gulag’s guards did nothing to stop the attacks.
One of the nearby indigenous Ostiak settlements reported that a woman who had escaped from Nagino Island had arrived at their home. Women who left the island had parts of their calves cut off and told horror stories of the ‘Island of the Dead’.
Survivors interviewed after the incident said they targeted victims who were simply clinging to life. They weren’t completely dead, but they weren’t necessarily alive either.
To maintain their humanity, people have reported eating only the heart or liver to technically avoid consuming human meat. They reported taking body parts, placing them on sticks that served as skewers, and roasting them over an open fire.
They justified the murders as mercy because the victims were going to die anyway.
Again, the guards did nothing. Rather, they seemed to be intrigued by the barbaric measures people took to survive. It is said that the guards threw pieces of bread at the prisoners and watched them fight over them. They arrested a few people for the crime, but overall they were powerless to stop it.
Now you may ask why did the Soviet government allow this to happen?
One reason is that they simply didn’t care. Another reason was that Nazino was so remote and remote from the centers of power that no one knew what was really going on.
Soviet official and Communist propagandist Vasily Velichko independently visited the island. Considered a reliable source, he attempted to investigate the situation on his own.
Upon arriving on the island, Velichko interviewed residents who described the violence. He also witnessed the presence of partially consumed remains, which became undeniable evidence of the widespread cannibalism and destruction that occurred at the time.
Velichko sent his report to Stalin and the Politburo, and the camps were immediately closed. However, it was decided that the report would remain confidential because it exposed the humiliating failures of the internal passport program, the Soviet government, and most importantly, Joesph Stalin.
The Najno Island Gulag was closed in June 1933, just two months after the camp opened. Of the 6,700 people sent there, only 2,200 survived. Those who survived were sent to other camps. Many people did not survive the transfer, and those who did were in no condition to work in other camps, so the death rate was extremely high.
This event had limited consequences within the Soviet system. A Communist Party committee investigated the incident, and some local officials and guards were punished and received light prison sentences.
More importantly, the Nacino disaster revealed fundamental flaws in the “Special Solutions” program. This served to reinforce the abandonment of plans for mass deportations using untrained urban populations and the transition to a more controlled and institutionalized Gulag camp system.
The truth about what happened in Nacino was only revealed in 1988, roughly 50 years after the tragedy. It was because of an organization called a ‘human rights group.’ monument, Participated in investigations of confidential documents.
monument We completed research and interviews related to the event and brought the island’s interest to the public. But the documents surrounding Nazzino were not officially declassified until 1994, three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Despite the revelations, the general public was not particularly aware of this tragedy until 2002, when a monument to Nacino victims was erected. Publications about the monument helped bring the tragedy to public attention, where it remained.
Nagino’s story is disturbing not only because of what happened on the island, but also because of how easily it happened. This was not the result of a natural disaster or sudden collapse, but the result of deliberate policies pursued with indifference to those affected.
