The Nazino Island tragedy

(The only map showing the location of the Nazino island tragedy, though the exact island used seems to remain unknown)

After the Soviet Union was formed in 1922, the early years of its rule were filled with problems. There was a long-lasting famine, numerous small rebellions and uprisings, and a huge most of the population was very poor. The police force was essentially made up of the army and anyone who stepped out of line wouldn’t exactly get a fair trial.

To improve the country, various ministers came up with numerous ideas that were either based on a complete lack of understanding or were just cruel. One of these ideas was based on Russia’s deKulakization policy, which among other things included relocating up to 2 million people classed as Kulaks, which was anyone of the peasant class who owned more than 3 hectares of land. The idea was to send these people to other areas of the country so the government could steal their land whilst making other regions of the country into profitable farmland.

When many of the Kulaks were sent to other areas of the country, they were supplied with tools and rations to help them create new settlements and farms. This was the basis of the idea to do the same thing with 2 million prisoners of the state who the government needed to get rid of. Instead of executing them all or working them to death, they were sent to other areas of the country to create a series of “special settlements” that could turn over 2.5 million acres of land into farmland to produce food for the nation.

Who were these 2 million prisoners?

Unlike the previous batch of 2 million Kulaks who were all, or at least mostly farmers from their own land, the 2 million prisoners were just normal people who were grabbed from the various cities and just about anywhere. The government needed 2 million people to live and work in the areas they wanted to turn into farmland, and it didn’t matter where they came from. After having problems kidnapping 2 million of its own citizens, the Russian government decided to lower the number to 1 million people, mostly made up of those taken from the cities.

Some of the survivors of the Nazino Island tragedy later explained how they were taken by the police, which included having their documents ignored and taken anyway, to being accused of having fake papers and even people leaving their passports at home a single time was enough to get taken.

Many of these people were sent to holding camps across the eastern side of the country until a permanent place could be found, with the largest camp in the area located at Tomsk with a capacity of 15,000. The camp was full before it was even fully built and the inmates there were normal people, mostly of the working class from the inner cities.

The authorities at Tomsk put pressure on the government for assistance because of the huge amount of people rapidly arriving in the area. This worried the authorities in Tomsk because those arriving were mostly already starving and diseased. The decision was made to send 6,000 people held at the camp to Nazino Island just upriver from Tomsk.

The Nazino Island tragedy

The government was desperate to empty some of the people out of Tomsk and decided the best place to do this quickly would be to send them to Nazino Island, a roughly 3 km long by 600-meter wide island located in the middle of the Ob River.

On the 18th of May, 1933, several barges loaded up with 6,114 people classed as “outdated elements” and sailed upriver to Nazino island. There were no official documents for the people sent there, but upon arrival, the guards counted 322 women and 4,556 men stepping onto the island, along with 27 people who died on the trip from Tomsk that were also unloaded.

The kidnapped civilians the government put on the island were supposed to find themselves with a range of tools and equipment, along with seeds for farming, but none of this was supplied. The island itself had several acres of woodland, but nothing that could be considered shelter and nothing for the people to use when they arrived. There was also a lack of food and nothing was supplied for the first 4 days after arrival.

Nine days after the first group arrived, another 1,200 people were sent there on the 27th, making matters much worse. Reports claim that a third of all people sent to the island were too weak to even walk upon arrival, leading to dozens of people dying each day. On the 21st of May, just 3 days after the initial group of over 6,000 arrived, three health officers were sent to the island to review the situation. They counted over 70 new deaths and recorded that 5 of the bodies showed signs of cannibalism.

Supplying food to the island was also a problem due to the desperation of the people. The guards planned to take 20 tons of flour to the island and leave it there, in the hope that it would be used sparingly and shared out, which of course didn’t happen. When the guards arrived, numerous fights broke out and people tried to steal the flour, leading to dozens of people getting shot each time they tried.

The guards eventually retreated to the opposite shore with the flour and the next morning came up with an idea for distribution. They elected a number of brigadiers who would collect the flour and be responsible for sharing it out between a brigade of 150 people. This didn’t happen and the people who collected the flour were often either greedy or criminals, eating it all themselves or selling it for anything valuable.

There was no way of using the flour and nothing that could be classed as cooking equipment was provided, including pots to boil water in. The only water people had came from the river, which they had to scoop up with their bare hands. The flour was mixed with river water and eaten as raw dough, causing many more deaths through dysentery.

With the situation getting more desperate by the hour, the criminals and stronger people within the settlers started to form gangs and victimize the weaker groups and individuals. They would kill people for food and even gold fillings they could use to trade later on.

Some people tried to swim to shore but were quickly hunted down by the guards who seemed to enjoy making a sport of it. They were ordered to kill anyone who tried to escape but due to the size of the island, it was impossible to watch all banks at the same time, especially at night. There were dozens of attempts to make it to the other side of the river, many of which involved using make-shift rafts constructed from logs lashed together with whatever people could find. The majority of these collapsed during the crossing and hundreds of bodies would wash up downstream.

Even if someone managed to make it across the river alive, there was nowhere to go. The nearest town was Tomsk, the place they were sent to before being taken to the island. On the other side of the river was the Taigi, a huge expanse of frozen forest without anywhere to go for hundreds of miles.

The end of the Nazino Island tragedy

The settlement was eventually dissolved after 13 weeks of hell and thousands of people dead. When the survivors were taken off the island, there were only 2,856 still alive from the original 2 groups of around 7,300 people. Most of the deaths caused were from starvation and disease, followed closely by murder and attempting to escape, leading to either dying from the cold or getting shot by the guards.

Since many of the people sent there didn’t have documents and weren’t officially recorded, exact records on numbers and who the people were will never be known. A report later made on the situation claimed around 2,000 had died from either starvation, disease, murder, or accidental death, which included anything from falling over to dying of the cold after trying to cross the river.

Another 2,000 people were classed as having disappeared and their location was unknown. These people included those who died on the island along with everyone else, or made it across the river alive and vanished into the endless forest of the Taigi, assumed dead. It also included the people they couldn’t identify, and many of those who died were classed as having disappeared instead of dying from one of the other reasons.

After the island was abandoned and the “special settlement” program ended, an investigation into the matter was conducted by the communist party which found that out of the roughly 2,000 survivors, only 200 to 300 were physically capable of work. Some of the guards tried to dispute the number of only 2,000 survivors in the official report but received prison sentences ranging from 1 to 3 years for speaking against an official.

The incident was quickly hidden from the public and all records of the Nazino island tragedy became classified. Out of all the special settlements that people were sent to, none of them came close to ending up as bad as Nazino Island, though they weren’t without their own problems.

In 1933, during the height of the resettlement program, there were 367,457 people classed as special settlers. Out of those, 151,601 were dismissed and allowed to leave, and 215,856 disappeared from their settlements, assuming either successfully escaping or having died. The Nazino Island tragedy was the single incident out of all the settlements that put an end to the program, and also to the end of using people with criminal backgrounds for any future settlement plans.