Nasino tragedy

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Location of Nasino

The tragedy of Nasino ( Russian Назинская трагедия , also Nasino affair ) took place from mid-May to mid-August 1933 in the Soviet Union on an island in the Siberian Ob River , not far from the confluence of the Nasina . On this island in the taiga near the village of Nasino in the Alexandrowski rajon , around 6100 people were exposed without food, accommodation, household items or tools in the course of a violent deportation campaign against “socially harmful and declassified elements” - as the Soviet authorities use the language. Hunger, deprivation, illness and attempts to escape reduced the number of abandoned people to around 2,200 within thirteen weeks, which also resulted in cannibalism .

Reports of these events reached the leadership of the CPSU in September 1933 . She stopped her extensive plans to deport people classified as “dangerous” or “asocial” to so-called special settlements in order to turn them into outposts for the development of inhospitable areas of the Soviet Union. Instead, these people were shot dead or in the labor camps of the Gulag spent.

background

Consequences of forced collectivization

At the beginning of the 1930s, the Soviet Union was in a serious crisis. Since the CPSU launched a comprehensive campaign to combat all peasants with ownership of the means of production - General Secretary Stalin publicly called for the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class " at the end of 1929 - supply bottlenecks have increased again. The consequences of deculakization and forced collectivization exacerbated the already existing problems that arose from the forced industrialization of the country, because industrial development was financed by massive exports of agricultural goods at the behest of the party . In many regions of the Soviet Union this resulted in supply crises that led to severe famines . Mass emigration from hunger regions, immigration to cities that could hardly be controlled and increasing crime in urban centers were signs of increasing tensions.

The state reacted to the mass exodus of peasants from hunger areas, which they interpreted as the result of counter-revolutionary activities, with sharp repression . In early 1933, the Soviet secret police OGPU set up checkpoints at train stations and important roads to intercept farmers from the Ukraine - where the Holodomor , an epochal famine raged -, from the areas on the Volga and from the North Caucasus . These refugees were arrested and taken to the Gulag camp system or sent back to the hungry regions. On January 23, 1933, it was also prohibited to sell train tickets to farmers. At the same time, police and intelligence officers made thousands of arrests in the western regions of the Soviet Union, Belarus , western Ukraine and Karelia . They were directed against alleged insurgents or alleged supporters of foreign invaders . The prisons in the affected regions, often inadequately guarded, were overcrowded due to the mass arrests, in some cases three to ten times. Mortality in the detention centers became alarming. In Uzbekistan , 15 percent of all prison inmates died of starvation every month. In Tashkent prison , that rate was 25 percent in February 1933.

Introduction of domestic passes

Since the beginning of 1933, the authorities introduced domestic passports for residents of important cities, which among other things certify the place of residence. The rural population, on the other hand, initially received no passports, which made them recognizable to the police and city authorities. Their permanent residence in certain cities was considered illegal after the introduction of domestic passports. Within a year, 27 million people - mainly residents of large cities - received appropriate papers. Such inland passes were intended to bring the large influx of farmers into the cities under control, because internal migration endangered the previously painstakingly built urban supply system. By the end of February 1933, the authorities had arrested around 190,000 starving farmers and sent them back to the villages they had left in search of food. Moscow , Leningrad and other cities, including the resorts of the nomenklatura such as Sochi and Tuapse , should also be able to be cleared of undesirable people. These included kulaks, criminals and "other (...) anti-social (...) and socially (...) dangerous (...) elements (...)".

A secret order stipulated which groups of people were to be refused a domestic passport: These included - with the exception of pensioners and the disabled - people who were not employed in a production facility or facility and did not do any useful work. Kulaks who fled from the place of their deportation were also not given a domestic pass. The same applied to people who moved in after January 1, 1931, who had no work in the city, were disruptive to production or were considered lazy. People without civil rights were also to be refused a domestic passport, as were exiles and those sentenced to prison terms. "Asocial elements" with connections to the criminal milieu were also eliminated from the group of passport holders. Foreign refugees were not given appropriate papers if they were not considered to be politically persecuted in their countries of origin. The refusal of the passport also took place for the family members if they lived together with persons of the above mentioned groups. Anyone who was denied a domestic passport had to leave the city within 14 days. This person was not allowed to settle in cities with special status. In Moscow and Leningrad, the settlement ban also applied to the surrounding area within a radius of one hundred kilometers.

In March and April 1933, the first two months of the campaign , authorities in the city of Moscow refused domestic passports to 70,000 people. In Leningrad, that number was 73,000. Many of those affected and those who did not anticipate a chance of obtaining a national passport from the outset dived into illegality. This in turn led to extensive controls and raids by the militias . Between March and July 1933, 85,937 people in Moscow who were found without a passport were caught by the authorities; in Leningrad this number was 4776. Their fate was decided out of court: Immediate expulsion and a settlement ban for 30 other cities was possible. A second option was deportation to “special settlements”. The third option was to be sent to a Gulag camp for three years. In many cases, consideration and decision on the individual case was dispensed with. Instead, those caught were deported immediately.

The "great plan" for deportation

Genrich Jagoda , head of the OGPU, and Matwei Berman , head of the Gulag, jointly developed a plan for the deportation of one million people each to Western Siberia and Kazakhstan . The aim of this plan was to get rid of allegedly anti-Soviet people from cities and rural regions through mass deportations and at the same time to open up barely populated areas of the Soviet Union. The planners estimated the cost of the campaign at 1,394 million rubles . Two years after the resettlement campaign ended, the investment should bear fruit. From this point on, it was calculated that the deportees would be able to provide for themselves and make contributions to finance government spending.

In their conceptions, the two planners built on experiences made with the mass deportation of two million farmers. These had been expelled or forcibly resettled from their home regions since 1930 because they had resisted forced collectivization or were suspected of doing so. At the beginning of February 1933, Jagoda and Berman presented their “great plan” - as their project was called - to Stalin. The latter approved it and also called for the overcrowded prisons to be relieved by deporting prisoners.

Negotiations and preparations

Rejection of the plan by West Siberian officials

On February 7, 1933, Jagoda informed the OGPU head of Western Siberia by telegram that the deportation of one million people to this area was imminent. The target region in particular are the largely undeveloped, extensive forest and swamp areas of the northern Narym area . Jagoda asked his contact person to provide comprehensive answers to the question of how this deportation could be carried out on site.

Two days later, the West Siberian OGPU representative met with the two highest-ranking representatives from Siblag , the authority responsible for the administration of the labor camps and special settlements, and with the top head of the West Siberian party structure, Robert Eiche . Jagoda's plan was consistently rejected: accepting one million deportees would overwhelm all of the region's resources, increase existing supply problems, and worsen social tensions and the “banditry” that is so pronounced in Western Siberia. Effective surveillance of such a large number of deportees could not be achieved with the available forces.

The regional heads of the OGPU, Siblag and the Party knew about the large number of victims to which deportation projects to Western Siberia between 1930 and 1932 had led. In the settlement district of Narym selected in 1933 alone, around 25,000 “special deportees” died in the course of forced resettlement between April 1931 and April 1932 - this corresponded to 11.7 percent of all special resettlers. Above all, however, the party and administration were concerned about public safety , as tens of thousands of forced deportees had managed to escape. The high number of escapes, the resulting dramatic increase in crime and the "gang mischief" seemed to be harbingers of social turmoil . With these hints, Eiche - as a loyal Stalinist mainly responsible for the rigorous deculakization and forced collectivization in Western Siberia - justified his rejection of the "great plan" against Stalin in a letter of February 10, 1933.

negotiations

Representatives from Siblag and the West Siberian OGPU then negotiated in Moscow with representatives of the Soviet People's Commissariats and the economic planning authority Gosplan about the “great plan”. In the course of these talks they managed to reduce the number of deportees to 500,000. In return, however, the material and logistical resources with which the deportation was to be carried out were drastically reduced - in some cases to 20 percent of the original values. On March 7, 1933, Robert Eiche agreed to this compromise. Three days later the Politburo in Moscow also approved the agreement. On April 20, 1933, the Council of People's Commissars finally passed a resolution on the establishment of OGPU “work settlements” that were to be organized in a similar way to the already existing “special settlements” for “kulaks”.

Preparations on site

In the Alexandrowskoje-Wachowskaja commandant's office, Commandant Dimitri Zepkow was first informed by telegram on February 16, 1933 that he would have to reckon with around 25,000 new deportees in his area of ​​responsibility, located in the Narym district, as soon as the Ob was navigable again. Zepkow then formed a five-person commission to tackle the local preparatory planning and work. It determined 30 settlement sites along the Ob within a radius of around 200 kilometers from Alexandrowskoje . Due to the remote location of these destinations in the swamp and forest regions, successful escape attempts should be minimized.

Further preparatory work was stuck in the beginning. All efforts to recruit workers in March and April to set up infrastructure such as storage facilities, baths or a bread factory failed. The same applied to the plans to build or rent boats in order to be able to distribute the deportees to the settlement sites on the Ob. Zepkow was also unaware that the majority of the deportees who finally arrived at the Alexandrowskoye-Wachowskaya headquarters were not farmers, but city dwellers who were completely inexperienced in agricultural activities such as clearing and reclamation .

Zepkow received two telegrams on May 5, 1933. They announced the imminent arrival of several thousand "declassed elements" as soon as the weather conditions allowed the transport from Tomsk. The information about the size of this first "contingent" fluctuated. One telegram announced a size of 3000 people, the second telegram announced 5000 to 6000 people. At the beginning of May, next to nothing was prepared on site, because the local authorities did not expect the deportees to arrive until the end of June, i.e. six to eight weeks later. The telegrams made it clear that it was not mostly kulaks who would arrive, but people from cities who were also reputed by the OGPU to cause unrest. A settlement near Alexandrowskoje therefore did not seem opportune to the decision-makers around Zepkow. They decided to make an island about 70 kilometers downstream near Nasino the place where the "declassed elements" would be disembarked. From there, small groups were then to be brought in batches to their final settlement on the banks of the Ob and its tributaries.

deportation

Deported groups of people

Those deported to Western Siberia came from the Ukraine , the Volga regions , the North Caucasus, the holiday regions on the Black Sea, as well as Leningrad and Moscow. They can be roughly divided into three groups. On the one hand there were peasants who were referred to as "kulaks" or "saboteurs of collectivization". This sub-group made up the majority of the deportees. On the other hand, there were many people who were unable to show their new national passport during controls. In addition, prisoners were moved from overcrowded detention centers to Western Siberia.

Most of the farmers came from the famine regions of the Urals , the Volga region and the North Caucasus. When they arrived in Western Siberia, they were in an extremely critical state of health - officials who inspected them spoke of "semi-corpses". The deportees of peasant origin also included those who were arrested, although they could present an official order from their kolkhoz farm or an employment contract at the place of arrest . The same applied to farmers who had been recruited by agents of a factory or construction company that was urgently looking for workers.

Another group of people was made up of people "who were apparently randomly collected from markets, train stations and the street". This group of people also included children, old people, invalids , the mentally handicapped and the blind. The group of arbitrarily arrested and deported people also included those who were formally considered to be close to the regime, such as workers, relatives of functionaries and communists and in some cases even party members. Some of these people close to the regime were released on investigation after the news of the Nasino tragedy became known. However, those released were not allowed to return to their hometowns. They were also forbidden to settle in cities with a special status - at the time these included Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa , Kiev , Minsk , Kharkov , Rostov-on-Don and Vladivostok .

Prison inmates with a term of less than five years made up another group of people. Occasionally they were deported separately to Western Siberia. However, they were often transported together with other groups - “kulaks” or people without a national passport. Serious criminals were the minority among the prisoners. The majority of this group were petty criminals, thieves and those convicted of hooliganism or stolen goods . In addition, there were “speculators”, that is, people who traded in scarce goods. Most of them were young people between 16 and 30 years of age.

Tomsk transit camp

In Western Siberia there were three transit camps for deportees: The camp in Tomsk was the most important, and this was also where those people who were finally brought to the island near Nasino were imprisoned; There were two further transit camps in Omsk and Achinsk. All three camps had been closed since autumn 1931 and largely fell into disrepair by early 1933.

Nikolai Alexejew, OGPU representative for Western Siberia and regional chief of the political police, visited the camp in Tomsk on March 20, 1933 and ordered the construction of barracks with a total capacity for 8,000 people within six weeks. In addition, tents for 7,000 people are to be provided. The first rough plans for the deportation showed that a total of around 350,000 people were to be smuggled through the transit camp near Tomsk in three months. This number presupposes well-coordinated logistical processes. In the weeks after Alexeyev's visit, however, it became apparent that the necessary information was not available. Those in charge in Tomsk knew neither the date on which the first deportees would arrive at the transit camp, nor the size of the respective groups that were to be deported via Tomsk.

The Tomsk transit camp was not completed when the first deportation train reached its destination on April 9, 1933. Without planning or coordination, many other transport trains reached the transit camp in the following days, without the supply of the deportees being guaranteed. Ice drift on the Ob and its tributaries made further transport to places more northerly impossible at first. The capacity of the warehouse was sometimes exceeded five to six times.

Many deportees died on the transports to the transit camp. Dying continued in the camp. More than 500 internees died in the second half of April only a few days after their arrival. In May and June, the camp administration registered a further 1,700 deaths. The sick leave also weighed on the situation. According to official information, 40,698 people passed through the transit camp, of which 11,788 were classified as "sick".

The authorities were not in control of the situation. This was evident not only in the coordination of the deportation trains or in the supply of food and medical aid to the camp. The guarding of the deportees also remained inadequate. This illustrated the mass exodus of 204 deportees on June 17, 1933 immediately after the arrival of their train, which had started in Moscow on June 6.

There was also a conspicuous misjudgment on May 10, 1933. During the night riots broke out in a wooden barracks. There were people who had arrived from Moscow two days earlier. The camp administration called mounted police for help. In almost complete darkness, the guards opened fire on those who tried to escape from the barracks. In retrospect, it turned out that the unrest only arose because the deportees asked for water. Since their arrival in Tomsk they had only received bread and salted fish.

Onward transport to Nasino

In the first half of May, the already very tense situation in the Tomsk transit camp threatened to worsen, because before May 15, another 16,000 deportees from the Ukraine and the North Caucasus were expected to join the already 25,000 internees. For this reason, preparations were made immediately for the immediate shipment of deportees to the Alexandrowskoye-Wachowskaya headquarters, which was about 900 kilometers downstream. With this step, the camp management in Tomsk supposedly wanted to get rid of particularly rebellious persons. The transfer started on May 14, 1933.

The local organization for river navigation provided four barges . They were designed for the transport of wood, but hardly suitable for the transport of people. The person responsible for monitoring the deportees was ordered not to dock anywhere during the multi-day journey - the human cargo was considered too dangerous. All of the deportees - the "contingent" consisted of around 4900 people - had to spend the journey crammed into the holds below deck. On arrival on the island near Nasino, hundreds were unable to move and had to be towed ashore. Except for a small amount of food, the deportees were not allowed to take anything with them. When they arrived they had neither tools nor cooking utensils.

The transport was accompanied by 50 gunmen hastily recruited on the streets of Tomsk. These troops had no experience of guard duties, uniforms, authority or discipline. Except for having a weapon, she differed little from those on guard.

suspension

Arrivals

The four boats reached the transfer point Verkhne-Wartowsk on May 18, 1933. This was about 150 km upriver from Alexandrovskoye. At this point Dimitri Zepkow took over the management of the transport. After a few dozen kilometers downriver, he headed for the island near Nasino. The uninhabited river island, about three kilometers long and 500 meters wide, was flood- prone to flooding and consisted only of swamps and poplar groves.

On the afternoon of May 18, 1933, the barges with the deportees landed on the island near Nasino. An appeal by the deportees was not possible because the lists they had carried turned out to be too imprecise. A simple count showed that 332 women and 4556 men had survived the trip. In addition, 27 bodies were registered. A third of all living people were so exhausted that they could only go ashore with the help of third parties.

Supply of flour

The abandoned should be provided with a total of 20 tons of flour . When unloading, a fight developed. The guards opened fire and injured many people. Thereupon Zepkow had the flour reloaded and ordered it to be brought to the opposite bank of the Ob near the village of Nasino. Even there, however, there was no protection against moisture and cold.

The snowstorm that began on the night of May 19, 1933 covered the island with a layer of snow, and the flour was also affected by the precipitation. On the morning of May 19, the guards under Zepkow made a second attempt to distribute flour. Half a kilogram was provided per head. It remained unclear where the deportees were supposed to keep this flour - there were no suitable containers. As a makeshift, the flour was picked up with hats, shoes and other items of clothing or with the bare hands. When the flour was handed out, there was another scuffle, with many deportees being trampled in the resulting mess. This time too, guards shot the deportees and injured several.

In view of the chaotic distribution of food, Zepkow decided to have the flour distributed by so-called brigadiers in the future. Each of them received 75 kilograms of flour daily and had to organize its distribution to 150 people. The most ruthless of the deportees quickly captured the brigadier posts and used them for personal gain.

On May 20, too, the flour distribution was associated with severe outbreaks of violence. Eyewitnesses reported that bodies were lying around everywhere. The deportees also claimed to Zepkow that there were already cases of cannibalism on the island .

After his return, Zepkov organized a meeting in the village of Nasino. It was decided to mobilize all local resources to care for the abandoned. Tents were to be erected on the island for the sick and injured; Locals should build stoves; the villagers' stoves were confiscated . Zepkow himself left for Alexandrowskoye to bring urgently needed food and materials from there.

Hunger, trade and violence

In the next few days, two health officers managed to provide makeshift care to a few dozen sick people in tents on the island. These sick people received bread and semolina soup. The meager meal rations remained for the rest of the abandoned. The consumption of the flour mixed with river water led to many of the starving people suffering from dysentery . Some did not receive flour or had to exchange it for shoes, clothes or other valuables. This also included gold crowns that were broken out of the teeth of the dead.

The guards established a regime of terror and violence. Minor "offenses" could be punished with death. Such offenses included “cheating” when handing out flour. Massive physical violence against the deportees was the order of the day, as was blackmail and coercion . The most extreme form of violence against the abandoned, however, was shooting as when hunting . Members of the guards later stated that they had intended to prevent attempts to escape in accordance with the orders, and that deportees had repeatedly tried to escape on primitive rafts . These refugees were also likely cannibals.

cannibalism

There were repeated cases of cannibalism in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. They were connected with attempts to escape from the Gulag camps and with the recurring famine. Apparently, this phenomenon appeared early on the island of Ob. As early as the day after the suspension, the deportees made those responsible around Zepkow aware that there were dismantled bodies. Human flesh was grilled and eaten. On May 23, 1933, a commission made up of a doctor and the two health officers wrote a report. They noted that there was solid evidence of cannibalism. On May 21, 70 new bodies were registered on the island, five of which had livers, hearts, lungs and pieces of soft meat - breast and calf - cut out. The genitals , head and parts of the skin were removed from a male corpse . In addition, angry deportees brought three people before the commission members who they had caught with bloody hands and human livers in their hands. Within the next 14 days, the medical professionals wrote three more reports of similar content. Dozens of corpses showed traces of cannibalism. The guards had hardly responded to these incidents. Isolation of people suspected of cannibalism did not initially take place.

Murders , followed by cannibalistic acts, apparently did not occur until after May 29. Six suspects were then arrested and transferred to the Alexandrovskoye prison. In total, there have been around 50 arrests on suspicion of cannibalism. The suspects were often released after a short time. A profile of the suspects emerges from the surviving files: All came from the country, had prison or camp experience and were between the ages of 20 and 35. Eleven of those arrested were members of the OGPU executed . The Soviet secret police had previously managed to overturn the decision of a public prosecutor who had argued that the suspects could not be punished because there were no laws against cannibalism in the Soviet Union and the suspects could not be proven murder. To remain unpunished until a murder can be proven, actually offered perpetrators an attractive prospect: Satisfying hunger by consuming human flesh and, in the case of pre- trial detention, a roof over their heads as well as the daily ration of balanda , the thin soup served nationwide in prisons and camps.

A second group arrives

On May 27, 1933, a second group of deportees arrived on the island near Nasino. It consisted of about 1200 people who were transported in the hold of a barge from Tomsk to the island in Ob.

The health of the second group was generally even more critical than that of the first group, as there were a number of people with typhoid fever . These sick people were poorly isolated on the island. However, drugs were not available, and neither were devices to boil clothes. The medics noted in their report that boiling would certainly have completely destroyed the "rags" of the deportees. This could have resulted in death from frostbite, given the regular sub-zero temperatures at night.

Special settlements on the Nasina

On May 31, Dimitri Zepkov returned to Nasino with the party secretary of Alexandrovskoye Raion. Both brought tools such as axes , spades, and saws . They also carried lengths of fabric with them, but they remained useless because there were no sewing machines to process the material further. The bast shoes, which were also organized, were only enough for a few hundred people. Several thousand still had to endure barefoot in freezing temperatures at night.

Axes were not given to the deportees. Those responsible on site feared that axes would be used as cutting weapons . The axes were only to be handed over when the deportees had reached their final special settlement sites on the river banks. Urgent shelters were therefore not built on the island near Nasino.

With the help of the party secretary, Zepkow also managed to get around twenty sailing boats. They could take in a few dozen of the abandoned each. From the beginning of June, the boats brought them to five banks of the Nasina that were considered suitable. They were 60 to 100 kilometers upstream - a journey that took several days. This trip cost the lives of hundreds of exhausted people.

The goals on the banks of the Nasina differed little from the conditions on the island in the Ob. The guards left the new "special settlers" after leaving some food and tools for them for the first few days. Here, too, the deportees were left to their own devices. Many died trying to escape on rafts because they drowned or were shot by guards. Other escape projects ended with the loss of orientation in the vastness of the taiga.

The island near Nasino was completely cleared in mid-June 1933 with the exception of 157 people who were considered unfit for transport. The results showed that of the 6,000 to 6,100 originally abandoned, only 2,856 people were shipped up the Nasina. 1500 to 2000 people had previously died on the island. The rest could not be found.

Information from the government

News and reports

In the meantime Robert Eiche had knowledge of the events on the island near Nasino. On June 12, 1933, he asked Ivan Ivanovich Dolgich, head of the Siblag Department for Special Settlements, to carry out an on-site inspection. Dolgich reached the Nasino scene in the third week of June. He not only familiarized himself with the conditions on the Ob Island, but also visited "Settlement Site No. 1", which was the quickest to reach from Nasino.

In his report, Dolgich tried to downplay what had happened. The occurrence of cannibalism is not due to hunger. "Degenerates" are responsible for such actions . At the same time, he believed he saw signs that cannibalism was an expression of subversive attitudes directed against the political system of the Soviet Union. Another functionary used the term "habitual cannibalism" in this context. In his description, Dolgich interpreted the statement by the health officers that people died on the island in 1970 as a blatant exaggeration and also assumed that they had political motives for their statements. He described the settlers whom Dolgich had met in “Settlement Site No. 1” as “the purest dregs of society” and complained that the deportees consistently refused to work.

After Dolgich had left the settlers, he removed Zepkow from his office. His successor made sure that those found in "Settlement Site No. 1" were relocated back to the vicinity of Nasino. Three recruited building brigades, consisting of a total of 60 former kulaks, built a village there that resembled the one that had been built between 1930 and 1931. Nobody cared about the people in the other settlements on the Nasina.

Letter to Stalin

While responsible regional rulers like Dolgich tried to downplay the affair in their reports, Vasily Arsenyevich Velichko, a 24-year-old communist local journalist and instructor , began his own research on the situation of the special settlers in the Alexandrovskoye-Wachowskaya headquarters.

He then wrote a propaganda article for the local press. At the same time he formulated a detailed twenty-page letter about the results of his three-week research trip, which had led him to the Ob Island and the settlements on the banks of the Nasina. He stated that in mid-August 1933 only about 2200 of the abandoned people could be found. Velichko sent the letter on August 22, 1933 to his immediate superior, to Robert Eiche and to Stalin personally. He had repeatedly asked party members to inform him unfiltered, bypassing the official and internal party hierarchies, about events and conditions on site.

Investigations and decisions

Stalin received the report in early September and passed it on to members of the Politburo. Lasar Kaganowitsch , Anastas Mikojan , Mikhail Kalinin , Valerian Kuibyshev and Vyacheslav Molotov read it . On September 23, 1933 the Politburo set up a commission of inquiry. They stayed in the Narym region for several weeks. She also examined the new settlements on the Nasina. In her report, she stated the number of seriously ill patients to be around 800. She also balanced: Of the 10,289 people who were deported to the Alexandrowskoye-Wachowskaya headquarters in 1933, 2025 were still there. In mid-September, the strongest of the 1940 deportees were sent to Siblag labor camps. 6324 people had disappeared. Of those who remained, 50 percent were sick and bedridden, 35 to 40 percent exhausted and only 10 to 15 percent were able to work. The commission presented its report on October 31, 1933. There, in diplomatic terms, she recommended doing everything possible in future to improve the living conditions of the settlers.

A day later, the office of the West Siberian Party Committee met under Eiches leadership and discussed the commission's report. It stipulated that a number of local officials involved in the Nasino affair would have to answer. Some local officials and guards had to face an internal disciplinary committee of the OGPU. Zepkow, two of his closest collaborators during the weeks of the tragedy, and Zepkow's successor as commandant, were sentenced to camp imprisonment for between twelve months and three years. They would have thwarted the colonization plan of 1933 by " sabotage ". The Office of the Party Committee also demanded an examination of whether it would be possible to move the "declassed elements" located in the Alexandrowskoye-Wachowskaya headquarters to other areas. Finally, the message was sent to the Central Committee in Moscow to refrain from sending further groups of “urban declassed elements” to Western Siberia. The “great plan” of February 1933 was thus finished.

consequences

Preference of the warehouse system

The high proportion of those who disappeared from Nasino was representative of the deportation year 1933. The statistics registered a total of 367,457 "special resettlers" that were not found. 151,601 identified them as dead, 215,856 as fugitive. It was not just the escape rate that cast doubt on the economic viability of the extensive deportation and colonization project. Representatives of the administration and the party also repeatedly complained about a consistently inadequate work ethic in the special settlements.

With one of his dreaded U-turns, Stalin already moved away from the “great plan” at the beginning of May 1933. On May 8, 1933, one of his secret directives ordered the mass deportation of peasants to be abandoned immediately. The associated administrative instructions proved to be of little practical use in the weeks that followed. Mass arrests and deportations remained a common practice even in the summer weeks.

The Nasino tragedy finally made it clear to the party and state leaders in September 1933 that the system of special settlements was not achieving the desired goals. In particular, their lack of profitability caused those responsible to doubt the value of the system. In the second half of the year, the growth of the special settlements stopped abruptly. It decreased steadily until the outbreak of World War II . The labor camp as a form of repression and the exploitation of labor gained more and more the upper hand. As early as 1933, the number of inmates in such camps rose by 50 percent. Within four more years the absolute number of camp inmates doubled to around one million.

NKVD command no.00447

In 1937 the perception of marginalized groups and "socially harmful elements" changed dramatically again. Officially, they were increasingly suspected of collaborating with hostile powers - such as Poland or Japan . The will to counter them with ever more severe repression measures grew.

Leading representatives in the party, secret service and the state planned the final destruction of all "anti-Soviet elements". This project was expressed in the notorious NKVD order no. 00447 - a 15 or 19 page typescript . Nikolai Yezhov , head of the NKVD , signed this operational order for the "suppression of the former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements" on July 30, 1937. The implementation of this order was initially designed for four months, but it took almost four times as long. According to this order, the arrested were divided into two groups: those classified in category 1 were to be shot immediately. Category 2 members were sent to the Gulag camps. The Soviet state organs arrested a total of 767,000 people on the basis of this order. 387,000 of them were executed. The regionally differentiated quotas initially set were exceeded several times.

Western Siberia was of great importance for the conception of Order No. 00447, because the “mass action” against alleged members and supporters of the ROVS, the “Russian General Military Association”, an imagined far-reaching military conspiracy, allegedly led by generals, began here as early as June 1937 the whites . Those responsible in Western Siberia implemented the NKVD order particularly consistently. Again and again they asked for the fixed quotas to be increased for both categories. At times, the individual districts of Western Siberia got into a real race to meet the quotas and outperform the neighboring districts. Between August 1937 and November 1938 between 33,000 and 50,000 people were shot in Western Siberia. 23,000 to 30,000 people came to the Gulag camps. The majority of those affected in both categories were those who had to live as forced deportees in the West Siberian special settlements in the previous years.

Tradition, research, artistic processing

For many years the events of Nasino were part of the oral history of the Gulag. Occasionally they also circulated underground, as part of the so-called samizdat , self-published dissident literature. This changed with the Gorbachev era . Russian historians followed up on the clues and collected testimony as part of oral history . Contemporary witnesses reported on the events on the island, which in the region was called "Island of Death" or "Island of the Cannibals". Russian historians also discovered files relating to the Nasino tragedy. In 2002, various institutions published a collection of documents on this case: the Russian Institute of History of the Siberian Section of the Russian Academy of Sciences , the State Archive of Novosibirsk Oblast , the State Archive of Tomsk Oblast , the Tomsk Society Memorial and the Museum of the History of Political Reprisals Narym. The historian Sergei Krassilnikow took care of the editing. However, the edition was only 500 copies.

In some publications on Soviet history , particularly on the Gulag, the events were mentioned in passing. This also applied to the portrayal of the French historian Nicolas Werth in the Black Book of Communism . In 2006, Werth presented a French-language monograph on the tragedy of Nasino. It has now been translated into other languages, including German. Werth evaluated extensive files in the archives of the Russian secret service FSB and the President of the Russian Federation and embedded the events in the context of the social and political developments in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. In particular, Werth's study draws a connection from the violent forced collectivization of 1929–1932 to the Great Terror of 1937/38. His study was widely discussed in the specialist and public press.

In his 2012 thriller Hela havet stormar (German title: Zorn ), the Swedish writer Arne Dahl refers to tragedy.

literature

  • Anne Applebaum : The Gulag . From the English by Frank Wolf, Siedler, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-88680-642-1 .
  • Rolf Binner, Bernd Bonwetsch , Marc Junge: mass murder and imprisonment. The other story of the great terror (publications of the German Historical Institute Moscow, vol. 1), Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-05-004662-4 .
  • Rolf Binner, Bernd Bonwetsch, Marc Junge (eds.): Stalinism in the Soviet Province 1937–1938. The mass action due to operational order No. 00447 , (Publications of the German Historical Institute Moscow, Vol. 2) Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-05-004685-3 .
  • Manfred Hildermeier : The Soviet Union 1917–1991 (Oldenbourg floor plan of history, vol. 31), Oldenbourg, 2nd edition, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58327-4 .
  • Oleg Vitalievich Chlewnjuk : The History of the Gulag. From Collectivization to the Great Terror . Translation by Vadim A. Staklo. With ed. Assistance and commentary by David J. Nordlander. Foreword by Robert Conquest , Yale Univ. Press, New Haven [et al. a.], 2004, ISBN 0-300-09284-9 .
  • Nicolas Werth : A state against its people. Violence, Oppression, and Terror in the Soviet Union ; in: Stéphane Courtois , Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin. Collaboration: Rémi Kauffer, Pierre Rigoulot, Pascal Fontaine, Yves Santamaria, Sylvain Boulouque: The Black Book of Communism . Oppression, crime and terror. With a chapter "The processing of the GDR" by Joachim Gauck and Ehrhard Neubert. Translated from the French by Irmela Arnsperger, Bertold Galli, Enrico Heinemann, Ursel Schäfer, Karin Schulte-Bersch, Thomas Woltermann. Piper. Munich, Zurich, 1998, pp. 51-295 and pp. 898-911, ISBN 3-492-04053-5 .
  • Nicolas Werth: The island of cannibals: Stalin's forgotten gulag . Siedler, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-88680-853-3 ( excerpt from the book (PDF; 165 kB), accessed on November 20, 2010).

Web links

Book reviews

Reviews of The Island of the Cannibals (various language editions):

Others

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On forced collectivization and deculakization, see Werth: Ein Staat gegen seine Volk , pp. 165–177. See also Hildermeier: The Soviet Union , pp. 37–39.
  2. ↑ On the repression see Werth: Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 27-29. See also Werth: Ein Staat gegen seine Volk , p. 183. For the situation in the prisons, see Werth: Insel der Kannibalen , p. 29 f. and Khlevniuk: The History of the Gulag , p. 57 f.
  3. ↑ Timothy Snyder : Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin , CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62184-0 , p. 66.
  4. ^ Quote from Werth: Insel der Kannibalen , p. 31.
  5. ↑ Werth: Insel der Kannibalen , p. 35 f.
  6. ↑ On the thrust of the inland passes and the consequences of this measure, see Werth: Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 30–38 and Werth: Ein Staat gegen seine Volk , pp. 183 and 195 f. Comprehensive also David R. Shearer: Policing Stalin's socialism. Repression and social order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953 (The Yale-Hoover series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War), Yale University Press, New Haven et al., 2009, ISBN 978-0-300-14925-8 , Pp. 243-284.
  7. ↑ According to Khlevniuk: The History of the Gulag , p. 55, planning had already begun at the end of 1932. Details of the “great plan” at Werth: Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 19–22.
  8. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 40. Applebaum, Gulag , p. 141, calls Siblag a “network of logging camps that covered Siberia”.
  9. ↑ Günter Fippel: Democratic opponents and arbitrary victims of an occupying power and SED in Sachsenhausen (1946-1950) . Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-86583-251-1 , pp. 187-188. This absolute number is also in Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 67.
  10. ↑ Percentage in Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 67.
  11. ^ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 39–45. For the West Siberian resistance to the plan, see also Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag , p. 56. For the tense situation in West Siberia, see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 42–68.
  12. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 71–73; Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag , p. 56.
  13. ↑ Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag , p. 56.
  14. ↑ Information on his person in Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 77 f.
  15. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 89 f., P. 92 f.
  16. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 127–130.
  17. ^ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 97.
  18. ^ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 122.
  19. ↑ Nikolai Alexejew, representative of the OGPU for Western Siberia and regional head of the political police, in a letter to Genrich Jagoda dated May 16, 1933, quoted from Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 103.
  20. ↑ For details see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 104 f.
  21. ↑ See Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 119 f.
  22. ↑ See Werth, Ein Staat gegen seine Volk , p. 196.
  23. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 103-109.
  24. ↑ Examples in Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 109 f.
  25. ↑ Examples in Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 123.
  26. ^ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 117.
  27. ↑ On the situation of the Tomsk transit camp before the arrival of the first deportation trains, see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 95 f.
  28. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 97–99.
  29. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 100.
  30. ^ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 113.
  31. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 124 f.
  32. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 125 and pp. 130–133 describes the conditions under which the deportees were brought from Tomsk to the island near Nasino . The statement about comparability and of guards and guarded made Zepkow. See Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 132.
  33. ↑ Distance information from Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 132.
  34. ↑ For the events on the island on the day of arrival, see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 134 f.
  35. ↑ On the distribution of flour, the appointment of the brigadiers and the events on May 20, 1933, see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 135–137.
  36. ↑ On these developments on the island see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 137–141.
  37. ↑ See for example Fanny Facsar: When Stalin turned people into cannibals , Spiegel Online , January 21, 2007 (accessed on March 23, 2010). See also the information in Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 48, p. 141 f., P. 144 f. See also Werth, Ein Staat gegen seine Volk , p. 184. Also Applebaum, Gulag , p. 425 and Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag , p. 54. For the Ukraine 1933 see Timothy Snyder: Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin , CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62184-0 , pp. 70–72. For the Donets Basin see Tanja Penter : Coal for Stalin and Hitler. Working and living in Donbass 1929 to 1953 , Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0019-6 , pp. 102-104. Comprehensive Steven Bela Várdy, Agnes Huszar Várdy: Cannibalism in Stalin's Russia and Mao's China , in: East European Quarterly , XLI, No. 2, June 2007, pp. 223-238, here 226-233. ( pdf , accessed March 23, 2010).
  38. ↑ On cannibalism on the island near Nasino see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 142–148; on the Balanda see Applebaum, Gulag, p. 232.
  39. ↑ Information on the second group of abandoned people according to Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 148 f.
  40. ↑ In Russian Назинская (Nasinskaja) .
  41. ↑ For the events after May 31, 1933 and the figures see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 149–152.
  42. ↑ He is not - as Werth falsely assumes - identical with that Dolgich, who later became head of the all-Soviet Gulag, see Jürgen Zarusky: Die Stalinist Persecution and Destruction Policy (Review) , in: sehepunkte 8 (2008), No. 1 [15 . January 2008] (accessed March 25, 2010).
  43. ↑ See Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 146 f.
  44. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 144.
  45. ↑ Quoted from Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 154.
  46. ↑ On Dolgich's actions and report as well as on the measures of Zepkow's successor see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 152–157.
  47. ^ Date after Pavel Polian : Against their will. The history and geography of forced migrations in the USSR , CEU Press, Budapest [u. a.] 2004, p. 111 , note 105. ISBN 963-9241-73-3 .
  48. ↑ On Welitschko's initiative, see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 162–164.
  49. ^ On the commission see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 164–168.
  50. ↑ On the meeting of the West Siberian party office, the disciplinary measures, the penalties and the recommendations, see Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 168 f.
  51. ↑ Numbers in Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 181.
  52. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 182 f.
  53. ^ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 183 f.
  54. ↑ On this, Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , p. 186 f.
  55. ↑ Binner, Bonwetsch, Junge, Massenmord und Lagerhaft in detail on this order . The full German translation of the order can be found there on pp. 106–120. There, on p. 36, the length of the command is given as 19 pages. A length of 15 pages is mentioned in Binner, Bonwetsch, Junge (eds.): Stalinism in the Soviet Province , p. 11. It can be viewed online in German translation on the portal “100 (0) key documents on Russian and Soviet history (1917–1991)”. For an introduction to this command, see Paul R. Gregory: Lenin's Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives , Hoover Institution Press, Stanford / Calif. 2008, ISBN 978-0-8179-4812-2 , here pp. 43–61 (pdf, accessed March 31, 2010; 140 kB).
  56. ↑ Abbreviation for Narodny Kommissariat Wnutrennich Del (Russian НКВД = Народный комиссариат внутренних дел, used from 1934 to 1946 as an abbreviation for the Soviet secret service.
  57. ^ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 187–189. See also Werth, A State Against His People , pp. 209–211. There is no consensus in literature about the death toll from the Great Terror. See also Hildermeier, Die Sowjetunion , p. 43.
  58. ↑ Russkij obščevoinskij Soyuz.
  59. ↑ On the operation against the ROVS and their relationship to terror based on the NKVD order No. 00447 see Natal'ja Ablažej: The ROVS operation in the West Siberian region , in: Binner, Bonwetsch, Junge (ed.): Stalinismus in der Soviet Province , pp. 287-308. For the pioneering role of West Siberian party and NKVD cadres see also Aleksej Tepljakov: Die Rolle des NKVD der West Siberian Region , in: Binner, Bonwetsch, Junge (ed.): Stalinism in the Soviet Province , pp. 421–457, especially p. 428 .
  60. ↑ Werth, Insel der Kannibalen , pp. 189–192. Werth names the higher number in each case, the lower is found in Binner, Bonwetsch, Junge (eds.): Stalinism in the Soviet Province , p. 38. Tepljakov also mentions a number of around 50,000 shot dead. See Aleksej Tepljakov: The role of the NKVD of the West Siberian Region , in: Binner, Bonwetsch, Junge (ed.): Stalinism in the Soviet Province , pp. 421–457, here p. 455.
  61. ↑ Sergej Krasilʹnikov (Ed.): 1933 g. Nazinskaya tragedija . Vodolej, Tomsk 2002, ISBN 5-7137-0213-8 . See the Russian-language book presentation of the edition (accessed March 26, 2010). For the history of tradition, see also Anne Applebaum: First eat tree bark, then human flesh , in: Die Welt , November 18, 2006 (accessed March 26, 2010).
  62. ↑ See for example Anne Applebaum: Der Gulag , p. 112 f. Also Pavel Polian: Against their will. The history and geography of forced migrations in the USSR , CEU Press, Budapest [u. a.] 2004, p. 111 , note 105. ISBN 963-9241-73-3 . Or also Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag , p. 64 f. and 67 f.
  63. ↑ Werth: A state against its people , there p. 173 f. and p. 197.
  64. ↑ See web links. See also
    • Robert Legvold: (Review of) Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag by Nicolas Werth . In: Foreign Affairs , Vol. 86, No. 5 (Sep. – Oct., 2007), p. 178 f.
    • William Chase: (Book Review of) Werth, Nicolas. Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag . In: The Russian Review , Volume 67, No. 2 (April 2008), p. 351 f.
    • Michael Jakobson: (Review of) Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag by Nicolas Werth; Steven Rendall . In: Slavic Review , Vol. 67, No. 2 (Summer 2008), p. 507 f.
    • Alan Barenberg: (Review of) Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag by Nicolas Werth; Steven Rendall . in: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes , Vol. 50, No. 3/4 (September / December 2008), p. 543 f.
    • Christopher Joyce: (Review of) Nicholas Werth, Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag. In: Europe-Asia Studies , Vol. 60, No. 8 (October 2008), p. 1449 f.
    • Stephen G. Wheatcroft: (Book Review of) Lynne Viola : The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements & Nicolas Werth: Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag . In: American Historical Review , October 2008, pp. 1270-1272.
    • Helen Hundley: (Review of) Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag. By Nicholas Werth . In: The Historian , Vol. 71 (2009), pp. 920 f.
    • Andrew A. Gentes: Review: Nicolas Werth, Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag (...) . In: European History Quarterly , Vol. 40, (2010), pp. 187 f.
    • Hiroaki Kuromiya: (Review of) Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag. Human Rights and Crimes Against Humanity by Nicolas Werth; Jan T. Gross; Steven Rendall . In: The Slavonic and East European Review , Vol. 88, No. 4 (October 2010), pp. 770-772.
  65. ↑ Arne Dahl: Anger . German by Antje Rieck-Blankenburg, Piper, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-492-05306-8 .
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on May 22, 2010 in this version .

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