by Nicolas Werth
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Product Description
During the spring of 1933, Stalin's police rounded up nearly one hundred thousand people as part of the Soviet regime's "cleansing" of Moscow and Leningrad and deported them to Siberia. Many of the victims were sent to labor camps, but ten thousand of them were dumped in a remote wasteland and left to fend for themselves. Cannibal Island reveals the shocking, grisly truth about their fate. These people were abandoned on the island of Nazino without food or shelter. Left there to starve and to die, they eventually began to eat each other. Nicolas Werth, a French historian of the Soviet era, reconstructs their gruesome final days using rare archival material from deep inside the Stalinist vaults. Werth skillfully weaves this episode into a broader story about the Soviet frenzy in the 1930s to purge society of all those deemed to be unfit. For Stalin, these undesirables included criminals, opponents of forced collectivization, vagabonds, gypsies, even entire groups in Soviet society such as the "kulaks" and their families. Werth sets his story within the broader social and political context of the period, giving us for the first time a full picture of how Stalin's system of "special villages" worked, how hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were moved about the country in wholesale mass transportations, and how this savage bureaucratic machinery functioned on the local, regional, and state levels. Cannibal Island challenges us to confront unpleasant facts not only about Stalin's punitive social controls and his failed Soviet utopia, but about every generation's capacity for brutality--including our own.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Grim but important tale, 2008-10-17
A grim tale of ten thousand "anti-social elements" deposited on an empty Siberian island in the Ob river in the 1930s. But, more than that, it is a story of how the brutal purge machinery was oiled and run at its lowest levels. (Reviewed in Russian Life)
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 So How Was Stalin to Blame for This? , 2008-07-11
No doubt the deportation policy originated by Stalin's order in the Kremlin, but does that make him personally liable for every atrocity of the "gulag?" If so, then Nicholas II was responsible for every murder in a pogrom before 1917, and thus his execution was perfectly lawful. If these events in Werth's book indict "the Communist system," then surely the outrages committed in French Guiana in the same time period indict the legal order of France (author Werth's homeland) as yet another "failed utopian system."
The truth is that starvation and banditry predated the emergence of Stalin and Communism in Siberia. They were also found in other wild and woolly eastern locations, like frontier China and backwoods India. However, the disorganized state of Siberian society and economy, even as depicted by Werth, go far to dispel the myth of a "totalitarian" society where Big Brother is watching every move. Obviously the real problem in Stalin's Russia was that Big Brother too often looked the other way, refusing to come to grips with problems (even if doing much to create them) that were far beyond its capacities to resolve.
The three stars are not a reflection on Werth's research, so much as reflecting this reviewer's boredom with yet another beating of the dead horses of Stalin and Communism. The only thing worse than Communism in the 20th century - was anti-Communism. What moral that provides is best judged for one's self.
1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 Bogged down in numerical statistics, 2008-04-07
The author seems to be obsessed with numerical statistics. From the first page to the last, he bores the reader with unending statistics on how many exiles were shipped to various parts of Siberia. The title suggest that the book's focus is on the alleged cannibalism practiced by the exiles on Nazino island. However, cannabilism only receives brief mention throughout the whole book and leaves one wondering if it even happened at all.
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
 An interesting glimpse into the 'second' Gulag, 2007-08-14
As the author states this was the 'second' so called GULag, where people weren't sent to camps for hard labor but rather deported to various parts of the Soviet Union, such as this section of Siberia, to populate a place not even the Tsars, who tried for 350 years, could. The story in and of itself is quite fascinating and surprising in many respects. The bureaucracy and the obvious Soviet policies are who and what one could easily blame, but those on the bottom also took part in this disaster.
The numbers prepared for deportation were constantly being changed, the monetary funds allocated for these people as well as the horses, tools, and equipment they were to receive their new lives. Always rounding down since those in charge thought if anything extreme occurred those settlers already living there would lend a helping hand. I was surprised by the fact that to oversee this large landmass and its thousands of settlers the OGPU (precursor to the NKVD) had only 44 men, of whom many were clerks and of those clerks many came from the deportees themselves! At least one of their stories is recounted. Militia were also raised to help guard these prisoners and many times these men would let power go to their heads, they didn't want to be here and would beat prisoners and steal their food and/or clothing.
Many of those coming to this Island and other stops along the way were already suffering from the famine that was gripping a large portion of the Soviet Union, their eventual deaths could hardly be prevented. They were arrested usually because they had come to Moscow trying to escape the famine conditions of their homes. The quotas so many hear about when it comes to the Stalinist government are shown here. Aside from criminals, those already in prison, those labeled Kulaks, etc, were people who were simply snatched from train stations who were either passing through Moscow or had just come to Moscow with all their papers and documentation on them. Some Muscovites were snatched off the street because they didn't have their passports on them but had left them at home, no excuses would save them. It's hard to understand how something like that could happen, although it should be mentioned that a few weeks after these people had been deported their stories were checked and many were freed, but they were not yet allowed to return home!
What happens after these people are deported can be seen by the title of the book, there were cases of cannibalism and there emerges the story of a whole violent criminal class that had committed cannibalism in the past, all of this is recounted in the book. Many of those that committed such acts were not starving, which pointed to the fact that they had done this previously. Thus it was also concluded that such acts were not a sign of famine conditions. This book will go to show that the history of the Soviet Union cannot be viewed in black and white terms, there are many variables which need to be understood and these events have to be looked at on a case by case basis. Many of those who died were bullied and killed by the guards or the enormous criminal element they were with. How can one measure out an equal share of the blame to the government for putting them in such a position and to those who did the actual killings? Also interesting is the fact that previous Kulaks who were displaced were not subject to such conditions, they built their settlements and went on with their lives. But these men were used to these conditions and used to living on their own apparently, these elements from the urban centers of Moscow and Leningrad, combined with criminals, could not account for themselves like Kulaks and peasant farmers. An enormous number also tried to run away, while some might have been successful, too many died trying to cross the river Ob while others were undoubtedly lost in the Siberian wilderness. There are accounts of dozens if not hundreds of drowned bodies laying on the shore for kilometers on the opposite river bank of the Island. Just as an example, for the entire year of 1933, 367,457 people 'disappeared', of them 151,601 were recorded as dead and 215,856 as "fugitives". (pg. 181).
It is a fascinating look at a failed project, the inquiry launched into it after the majority of those deported died also shows that the government wouldn't simply stand by, someone had to pay. Those that eventually paid the price were the lower level functionaries, sentenced to various sentences of one to three years in camps. An excellent edition to literature on the "second Gulag" which few know about and an intriguing look into the Soviet Union of the 1930's.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
Powerful. Incredible. The holocaust at Cannibal Island., 2007-08-12
In the 1930's Stalin decided to liquidate the all kulaks, those peasants who owned at least a bit of property. After having their crops confiscated, peasants starved to death by the millions. Some suffered an even worse fate. They were sent to Siberia's Cannibal island.
Thousands of these people were dumped onto Nanzino island, a small island on the Ob river surrounded by the vast emptiness of Siberia. There was nothing to eat but a few bags of flour. Already, "a very large number of the deportees--at least a third--were so emaciated...they could no longer stand" (p 129).
Nanzino had nothing, no shelter, no other people to help, nothing edible. Nor was any help to come from the communist government. Russia was in turmoil. The vast numbers of starving farmers became roving bands of thieves. By 1930, western Siberia alone boasted some 880 such bands, and those were the ones the government acknowledged.
Nanzino quickly degenerated into Cannibal island. The strong were willing to do anything to survive, even if that meant eating the weak. One guard was courting a pretty young girl. He had to leave for a short time. "People caught the girl, tied her to a tree, cut off her breasts, her muscles, everything they could eat, everything, everything..." (p X1V).
There have been so many movies made from the holocaust of the Jews under the Nazis. I wonder why none have ever been made about the gulag.
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