Nazino affair
Encyclopedia
The Nazino affair was the mass deportation of 6,000 people, 4,000 of whom died, on Nazino Island in the Soviet Union
in 1933. The small, isolated Western Siberia
n island is located about 800 km north of Tomsk, in Alexandrovsky District, Tomsk Oblast
near the confluence of the Ob
and Nazina Rivers. It is called "Death Island" or "Cannibal Island" because about 4,000 out of 6,000 Soviet "special settlers" died there during the summer of 1933, after being abandoned with only flour for food, few tools and little clothing or shelter.
A report on the events was sent to Joseph Stalin
by Vassilii Arsenievich Velichko. The report was distributed by Lazar Kaganovich
to members of the Politburo
, and was preserved in an archive in Novosibirsk
. It states that 6,114 "outdated elements" (also known as "déclassé and socially harmful elements" or classless people) arrived on the island in late May 1933. They had been transported from Moscow
and Leningrad
, first by train to Tomsk, then by river barge to Nazino. At least 27 people died during the river transport. There was no shelter on the island, it snowed the first night, and no food was distributed for four days. On the first day 295 people were buried.
A special commission was then set up in September 1933 by the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Western Siberia, with their reports published in 2002 by the group Memorial
.
, head of the OGPU or secret police, and Matvei Berman
, head of the GULAG
proposed a self-described "grandiose plan" to Stalin to resettle up to 2,000,000 people to Siberia
and Kazakhstan
in "special settlements." The deportees or settlers were to bring over a million hectares of virgin land into production, and become self-sufficient in two years. This plan was based on the experience of deporting 2,000,000 kulak
s and other agricultural workers to the same areas in the previous three years. The resources available to support the plan were severely limited by the famine caused by the introduction of collective farms and dekulakization
. The original plan targeted several types of kulak
s, peasants, "urban elements," people living on the USSR's western frontiers, and petty criminals. By early Spring 1933 the number had been reduced to 1,000,000 deportees. Stalin rejected the plan in May 1933, about the time that deportees arrived on Nazino Island.
Many of the deportees were people in Moscow and Leningrad who had been unable to obtain an internal passport. The passportization campaign began with a December 27, 1932 decision by the Politburo to issue internal passports to all residents of major cities. One of their objectives was to "cleanse Moscow, Leningrad and the other great urban centers of the USSR of superfluous elements not connected with production or administrative work, as well as kulaks, criminals, and other antisocial and socially dangerous elements."
"Déclassé and socially harmful elements," that is former merchants and traders, peasants who had fled the famine in the countryside, petty criminals, or anybody who didn't fit into an idealized Communist class structure, were not issued passports, and they could be arrested and deported from the cities after a summary administrative procedure, where they were not present. Most of the arrestees were deported within two days. Between March and July 1933, 85,937 people living in Moscow were arrested and deported because they lacked passports; 4,776 people living in Leningrad were also deported. Those arrested in connection with the cleansing of Moscow prior to the May 1, 1933 May Day
holiday were deported to the Tomsk transit camp, with many later being sent to Nazino Island.
Velichko's report gave 22 examples of people who had been deported:
, and Achinsk
. The largest camp was at Tomsk, which had to be rebuilt from scratch, starting in April to hold 15,000 deportees. 25,000 deportees arrived in April even though the camp was not scheduled to be completed until May 1. River transport to the final labor camps was closed until the start of May until ice on the Ob and Tom River
s cleared. Most of the first arrivals were kulaks and other agricultural workers, and people from southern Russian cities. The arrival of so many deportees panicked Tomsk authorities, who viewed them as "starving and contagious."
A rail convoy holding déclassé deportees left Moscow on April 30, and a similar convoy left Leningrad on April 29, with both arriving on May 10. The daily food ration during the trip was 300 grams of bread per person. Criminal groups among the deportees beat the other deportees and stole their food and clothing. The authorities in Tomsk were unfamiliar with urban deportees, and expected trouble from them, so decided to send them to the most isolated work sites. Two nights after their arrival in Tomsk a disturbance broke out, as they demanded drinking water, which was put down by mounted troops.
Four river barges, which were designed to haul wood, were filled with about 5,000 deportees on May 14. About a third of the deportees were criminals who were sent in order to "decongest the prisons." About half were déclassé people from Moscow and Leningrad. The authorities in the Alexandro-Vakhovskaya komandatura, who were to be in charge of the labor camps, were first informed that they would be sent on May 5. These authorities had never worked with urban deportees and had no food, tools or supplies to support them.
The deportees were kept below decks on the barges and apparently fed a daily ration of 200 grams of bread per person. Twenty tons of flour - about four kilos per person - were also transported, but the barges contained no other food, cooking utensils, or tools. All supervisory personnel, two commanders and fifty guards, were newly recruited. The guards had no shoes or uniforms.
A fight broke out and guards fired on the deportees as the twenty tons of flour were deposited on the island and distribution began. The flour was moved to the shore opposite the island and distribution on the island was tried again the next morning, with another fight and more firing resulting. Afterward, all flour was distributed via "brigadiers" who collected flour for their brigade of about 150 people. The brigadiers were often criminals who abused their positions. There were no ovens to bake bread, so the deportees ate the flour mixed with river water, which led to dysentery.
Some deportees made primitive rafts to try to escape, but most of the rafts collapsed and hundreds of corpses washed up on the shore below the island. Guards hunted and killed other escapees, as if they were hunting animals for sport. Because of the lack of any transportation to the rest of the country, except upstream to Tomsk, and the harshness of life on the Taiga, any other escapees were ultimately presumed dead.
On May 21 the three health officers counted 70 new deaths, with the effects of cannibalism observed in five cases. Over the next month about 50 people were arrested for cannibalism.
During early June, 2,856 deportees were transferred to smaller settlements upstream along the Nazina River, leaving just 157 deportees who could not be moved for health reasons on Nazino Island. Several hundred of the deportees died during the transfer; 1,500 – 2,000 deportees had died on the island, and hundreds of escapees had disappeared. People who survived the transfer found themselves with few tools, and little food in their new settlements, and there was an outbreak of typhus. Most deportees refused to work in the new settlements.
In early July new settlements were constructed by the authorities using non-deportee labor, but only 250 settlers were transferred there. About 4,200 new deportees arrived from Tomsk and were housed in these settlements. According to Velichko’s letter to Stalin, on August 20 only 2,200 people survived out of about 6,700 deportees that he calculated had arrived from Tomsk.
Velichko’s letter resulted in a commission to study the affair. In October the commission estimated that of 2,000 survivors, half were ill and bedridden, and only about 200 to 300 were capable of working.
in the Soviet Union, details of the Nazino affair became available to the general public through the efforts of the group Memorial
.
In 1989, an eyewitness reported to Memorial:
The French historian Nicolas Werth, who earlier co-authored The Black Book of Communism
, published the book Cannibal Island about the affair in 2006. It was translated into English in 2007.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1933. The small, isolated Western Siberia
West Siberian Krai
West Siberian Krai was an early krai of Russian SFSR. By the 1937 All-Union Census, it had population of 6,433,527....
n island is located about 800 km north of Tomsk, in Alexandrovsky District, Tomsk Oblast
Alexandrovsky District, Tomsk Oblast
Alexandrovsky District is an administrative and a municipal district of Tomsk Oblast, Russia. It is located in the northwestern portion of the oblast and borders with the territory of the town of Strezhevoy, with Kargasoksky District, and with Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. The area of the...
near the confluence of the Ob
Ob River
The Ob River , also Obi, is a major river in western Siberia, Russia and is the world's seventh longest river. It is the westernmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean .The Gulf of Ob is the world's longest estuary.-Names:The Ob is known to the Khanty people as the...
and Nazina Rivers. It is called "Death Island" or "Cannibal Island" because about 4,000 out of 6,000 Soviet "special settlers" died there during the summer of 1933, after being abandoned with only flour for food, few tools and little clothing or shelter.
A report on the events was sent to Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
by Vassilii Arsenievich Velichko. The report was distributed by Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a Soviet politician and administrator and one of the main associates of Joseph Stalin.-Early life:Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire...
to members of the Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
, and was preserved in an archive in Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...
. It states that 6,114 "outdated elements" (also known as "déclassé and socially harmful elements" or classless people) arrived on the island in late May 1933. They had been transported from Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
, first by train to Tomsk, then by river barge to Nazino. At least 27 people died during the river transport. There was no shelter on the island, it snowed the first night, and no food was distributed for four days. On the first day 295 people were buried.
A special commission was then set up in September 1933 by the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Western Siberia, with their reports published in 2002 by the group Memorial
Memorial (society)
Memorial is an international historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recording and publicising the Soviet Union's totalitarian past, but also monitors human rights in post-Soviet states....
.
The plan
In February 1933 Genrikh YagodaGenrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda , born Enokh Gershevich Ieguda , was a Soviet state security official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's Stalin-era security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936...
, head of the OGPU or secret police, and Matvei Berman
Matvei Berman
Matvei Davidovich Berman was a Soviet intelligence officer and head of the GULAG Soviet prison camp system from 1932 to 1937.-Life:...
, head of the GULAG
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
proposed a self-described "grandiose plan" to Stalin to resettle up to 2,000,000 people to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
in "special settlements." The deportees or settlers were to bring over a million hectares of virgin land into production, and become self-sufficient in two years. This plan was based on the experience of deporting 2,000,000 kulak
Kulak
Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
s and other agricultural workers to the same areas in the previous three years. The resources available to support the plan were severely limited by the famine caused by the introduction of collective farms and dekulakization
Dekulakization
Dekulakization was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the better-off peasants and their families in 1929-1932. The richer peasants were labeled kulaks and considered class enemies...
. The original plan targeted several types of kulak
Kulak
Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
s, peasants, "urban elements," people living on the USSR's western frontiers, and petty criminals. By early Spring 1933 the number had been reduced to 1,000,000 deportees. Stalin rejected the plan in May 1933, about the time that deportees arrived on Nazino Island.
Many of the deportees were people in Moscow and Leningrad who had been unable to obtain an internal passport. The passportization campaign began with a December 27, 1932 decision by the Politburo to issue internal passports to all residents of major cities. One of their objectives was to "cleanse Moscow, Leningrad and the other great urban centers of the USSR of superfluous elements not connected with production or administrative work, as well as kulaks, criminals, and other antisocial and socially dangerous elements."
"Déclassé and socially harmful elements," that is former merchants and traders, peasants who had fled the famine in the countryside, petty criminals, or anybody who didn't fit into an idealized Communist class structure, were not issued passports, and they could be arrested and deported from the cities after a summary administrative procedure, where they were not present. Most of the arrestees were deported within two days. Between March and July 1933, 85,937 people living in Moscow were arrested and deported because they lacked passports; 4,776 people living in Leningrad were also deported. Those arrested in connection with the cleansing of Moscow prior to the May 1, 1933 May Day
International Workers' Day
International Workers' Day is a celebration of the international labour movement and left-wing movements. It commonly sees organized street demonstrations and marches by working people and their labour unions throughout most of the world. May 1 is a national holiday in more than 80 countries...
holiday were deported to the Tomsk transit camp, with many later being sent to Nazino Island.
Velichko's report gave 22 examples of people who had been deported:
Transport
According to the plan of Yagoda and Berman the deportees would pass through transit camps at Tomsk, OmskOmsk
-History:The wooden fort of Omsk was erected in 1716 to protect the expanding Russian frontier along the Ishim and the Irtysh rivers against the Kyrgyz nomads of the Steppes...
, and Achinsk
Achinsk
Achinsk is a city in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located on the right bank of the Chulym River near its intersection with the Trans-Siberian Railway, west of Krasnoyarsk. Area: . Population:...
. The largest camp was at Tomsk, which had to be rebuilt from scratch, starting in April to hold 15,000 deportees. 25,000 deportees arrived in April even though the camp was not scheduled to be completed until May 1. River transport to the final labor camps was closed until the start of May until ice on the Ob and Tom River
Tom River
Tom is a river in Russia, a right tributary of the Ob. Its length is 540 miles . Its source is in the Abakan mountains , and it flows northward through the Kuznetsk Basin...
s cleared. Most of the first arrivals were kulaks and other agricultural workers, and people from southern Russian cities. The arrival of so many deportees panicked Tomsk authorities, who viewed them as "starving and contagious."
A rail convoy holding déclassé deportees left Moscow on April 30, and a similar convoy left Leningrad on April 29, with both arriving on May 10. The daily food ration during the trip was 300 grams of bread per person. Criminal groups among the deportees beat the other deportees and stole their food and clothing. The authorities in Tomsk were unfamiliar with urban deportees, and expected trouble from them, so decided to send them to the most isolated work sites. Two nights after their arrival in Tomsk a disturbance broke out, as they demanded drinking water, which was put down by mounted troops.
Four river barges, which were designed to haul wood, were filled with about 5,000 deportees on May 14. About a third of the deportees were criminals who were sent in order to "decongest the prisons." About half were déclassé people from Moscow and Leningrad. The authorities in the Alexandro-Vakhovskaya komandatura, who were to be in charge of the labor camps, were first informed that they would be sent on May 5. These authorities had never worked with urban deportees and had no food, tools or supplies to support them.
The deportees were kept below decks on the barges and apparently fed a daily ration of 200 grams of bread per person. Twenty tons of flour - about four kilos per person - were also transported, but the barges contained no other food, cooking utensils, or tools. All supervisory personnel, two commanders and fifty guards, were newly recruited. The guards had no shoes or uniforms.
Life and death on Nazino Island
The barges unloaded their passengers during the afternoon of May 18, on Nazino Island, a swampy island about 3 km long and 600 meters wide. There was no roster of the disembarking deportees, but on arrival 322 women and 4,556 men were counted, plus 27 bodies of those who died during the trip from Tomsk. Over a third of the deportees were too weak to stand on arrival. About 1,200 additional deportees arrived on May 27.A fight broke out and guards fired on the deportees as the twenty tons of flour were deposited on the island and distribution began. The flour was moved to the shore opposite the island and distribution on the island was tried again the next morning, with another fight and more firing resulting. Afterward, all flour was distributed via "brigadiers" who collected flour for their brigade of about 150 people. The brigadiers were often criminals who abused their positions. There were no ovens to bake bread, so the deportees ate the flour mixed with river water, which led to dysentery.
Some deportees made primitive rafts to try to escape, but most of the rafts collapsed and hundreds of corpses washed up on the shore below the island. Guards hunted and killed other escapees, as if they were hunting animals for sport. Because of the lack of any transportation to the rest of the country, except upstream to Tomsk, and the harshness of life on the Taiga, any other escapees were ultimately presumed dead.
On May 21 the three health officers counted 70 new deaths, with the effects of cannibalism observed in five cases. Over the next month about 50 people were arrested for cannibalism.
During early June, 2,856 deportees were transferred to smaller settlements upstream along the Nazina River, leaving just 157 deportees who could not be moved for health reasons on Nazino Island. Several hundred of the deportees died during the transfer; 1,500 – 2,000 deportees had died on the island, and hundreds of escapees had disappeared. People who survived the transfer found themselves with few tools, and little food in their new settlements, and there was an outbreak of typhus. Most deportees refused to work in the new settlements.
In early July new settlements were constructed by the authorities using non-deportee labor, but only 250 settlers were transferred there. About 4,200 new deportees arrived from Tomsk and were housed in these settlements. According to Velichko’s letter to Stalin, on August 20 only 2,200 people survived out of about 6,700 deportees that he calculated had arrived from Tomsk.
Velichko’s letter resulted in a commission to study the affair. In October the commission estimated that of 2,000 survivors, half were ill and bedridden, and only about 200 to 300 were capable of working.
Rediscovery
In 1988, at the time of GlasnostGlasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
in the Soviet Union, details of the Nazino affair became available to the general public through the efforts of the group Memorial
Memorial (society)
Memorial is an international historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recording and publicising the Soviet Union's totalitarian past, but also monitors human rights in post-Soviet states....
.
In 1989, an eyewitness reported to Memorial:
The French historian Nicolas Werth, who earlier co-authored The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book authored by several European academics and edited by Stéphane Courtois, which describes a history of repressions, both political and civilian, by Communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and...
, published the book Cannibal Island about the affair in 2006. It was translated into English in 2007.
See also
- GulagGulagThe Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
- Involuntary settlements in the Soviet UnionInvoluntary settlements in the Soviet UnionForced settlements in the Soviet Union took several forms. Though the most notorious was the Gulag labor camp system of penal labor, resettling of entire categories of population was another method of political repression implemented by the Soviet Union. At the same time, involuntary settlement...
- Mass killings under Communist regimesMass killings under Communist regimesMass killings occurred under some Communist regimes during the twentieth century with an estimated death toll numbering between 85 and 100 million. Scholarship focuses on the causes of mass killings in single societies, though some claims of common causes for mass killings have been made...
- Population transfers in the Soviet Union