Cannibal island : death in a Siberian gulag/ Nicolas Werth ; translated from French by Steven Rendall.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Werth, Nicolas, 1950- author.

Contributor:

Rendall, Steven, translator.

Series:

Human rights and crimes against humanity

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Forced migration--Russia (Federation)--Ob River Region--History--20th century.

Forced migration.

Political persecution--Soviet Union.

Political persecution.

Internment camps--Soviet Union.

Internment camps.

Political prisoners--Soviet Union.

Political prisoners.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

[Princeton, N.J.] : Princeton University Press, 2024.

Language Note:

Translated from French.

Summary:

A searing historical account of a tragic episode of the Stalinist terrorDuring 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword / Jan T. Gross

Preface

Glossary

CHAPTER 1 A "grandiose plan"

CHAPTER 2 Western Siberia, a Land of Deportation

CHAPTER 3 Negotiations and Preparations

CHAPTER 4 In the Tomsk Transit Camp

CHAPTER 5 Nazino

Conclusion

Epilogue, 1933-37

Acknowledgments

Notes.

Notes:

First published in 2006 under the title L’Île aux cannibales 1933, unedéportation-abandon en Sibérie.

Includes bibliographical references.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (, viewed June 10, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version: Werth, Nicolas, 1950- Cannibal island.

ISBN:

9780691262529

0691262527

OCLC:

1427334664

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license