A TINY island in the middle of a Russian river was once the harrowing home to Stalin's chilling cannibal gulag.
Nazino Island, in Siberia's Ob river, saw thousands of USSR prisoners eating each other alive and hanging human flesh from trees.
Dubbed the "Island of Death", the low-lying, swampy strip was a mere 1.9 miles long and less than a mile wide.
It became the bloody ground for horrific deaths that unfolded in a matter of weeks.
In May 1933, some 6,700 prisoners were forcibly relocated to Nazino Island, now Tomsk Oblast, in Russia.
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Labelled as “socially harmful and declassed elements”, people like hardened criminals, profiteers, beggars, prostitutes and former priests were sent to frosty Siberia to work for Stalin's state.
Tasked with constructing a settlement and cultivating the land, people were also left with minimal supplies and tools in the island gulag.
For over a month, they were left to their own devices with no shelter or food apart from tiny rations of flour, which would be mixed with river water in a poor attempt to make porridge.
It didn't take long for some to cross the line and start eating their fellow prisoners.
And nearby villagers became the unwitting witnesses of the nightmare unfolding on the island.
One girl, who was just 13 at the time, recalled the horror death of a "beautiful young woman" after she was no longer under a guard's watch, Russia Beyond reported.
She said: "When he left, people grabbed the girl, tied her to a tree and stabbed her to death, eating everything they could. They were hungry and wanted to eat.
"All over the island, one could see human flesh being ripped, cut and hung on trees. The clearings were littered with corpses.”
Within 13 weeks, over 4,000 prisoners had perished or vanished, with many survivors suffering from poor health.
Those attempting to escape the horror island were met with lethal force from armed guards.
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'Island of Death'
Upon arrival, the first batch of prisoners found themselves with no bedding or tools to make temporary shelter.
Just two days later, they were met with the below-zero temperatures and freezing rain.
Defenceless against the ruthless Siberian weather, people would sit around campfires and scour the island in the hopes of finding some bark and moss.
Only on the fourth day were they given some rye flour, barely a few hundred grams per person.
After receiving their scant supplies, the villagers raced to the river and used their hats, footwraps, coats, and pants as makeshift containers in their attempt to cook porridge.
Hundreds of deportees died soon afterwards.
Hungry and cold, they either fell asleep by the campfires and were burnt alive, or died from exhaustion.
Some were also subjected to the violence of some of the guards, who beat them with their rifle butts.
And escape from that "island of death" was difficult since it was encircled by machine-gun crews who shot everyone who attempted to flee.
The cannibal gulag
Cannibalism started to go out of control on Nazino Island took just 10 days after prisoners were dumped there.
The first to cross the line were the hardened criminals among them, who formed gangs and terrorised the hundreds of others.
“I was choosing those who were no longer alive, but not yet dead either,” testified a prisoner by the name of Uglov, who was being interrogated under accusations of cannibalism.
Uglov said: "You could see that a person was a goner, that they would die anyway in a day or two.
"So it would be easier for them to die... now, right away, instead of suffering for two or three more days.”
Theophila Bylina, a fellow villager, remembered the day a female prisoner came into her home without her calves, only to find out they'd been chopped off and grilled.
“The deportees sometimes came to our apartment. Once, an old woman came from the Death Island. She was being deported further... I saw that the old woman’s calves had been chopped off.
"When I asked, she said: ‘They were cut off on Death Island and grilled.’
"All the flesh on her calves had been cut off. Her legs were freezing all the time and the woman wrapped them in rags.
"But she was able to walk unaided. She looked old, but in reality she was in her early 40s.”
A month later, the hungry, ill, and weary people were evacuated from the island, where they had been surviving on minuscule food rations supplied on occasion.
But their agony did not end there.
They continued to perish in Siberian communities, attempting to subsist on little rations in cold and wet barracks unfit for living.
Just little more than 2,000 of the 6,000 victims survived the horrors of Stalin's cannibal gulag.
Without Vasily Velichko, an instructor of the Communist Party's Narym district committee, no one would have heard about this catastrophe.
In July 1933, he was dispatched to one of the labour settlements to report on how the "declassed elements" were effectively relocated there, but instead he became entirely absorbed in an inquiry into what had taken place.
More than 80 deportees and guards were convicted, with 23 sentenced to death for "looting and assault" and 11 for cannibalism.
The broader public first became aware of the Nazino tragedy in the late 1980s, soon before the Soviet Union collapsed.
Labour camp exhile
The Nazino Island horrors stem from when the Soviet Union decided to bring back the passport system that was scrapped after the 1917 revolution.
At that time, the Bolshevik leaders got rid of passports to let people move freely around the country.
However, this led to lots of peasants moving to cities seeking a better life, causing a housing shortage for the workers, who were the main supporters of the government.
Starting in 1932, workers were issued passports, but peasants didn't get them until much later, mostly in 1974.
When the passport system returned, cities kicked out people without proper papers, targeting those considered "anti-Soviet" or not contributing to society.
Leaders thought this plan would clean cities of unwanted people and populate Siberia.
People like profiteers, beggars, prostitutes and former priests were then sent to frosty Siberia to work for the state.
Police were very strict, often arresting people without passports, even if they had one but didn't have it on them.
Sent in the same clothes they were caught in, people were quickly sent to labour camps in the east, sometimes with hardened criminals sent to ease overcrowded jails in the west.
