Cannabilism in Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China
Posted by Shannon
Tags: cannibalism, china, gulags, history, soviet, ussrAnne Applebaum, the author of the recent major synthesis of the evolution of the Soviet Gulag, mentions a number of such phenomena. (12) As an example, in May 1933, 6,114 peasants were being deported to the uninhabited Nazino Island of the Ob River, beyond the Artic Cir le, where they were deposited without any food. On the very first day of their arrival 295 of them died. Three months later, when a party functionary visited the island to examine the situation, he was forced to report that of the original six thousand only about one-third were still alive, but only because they lived off the flesh of their deceased comrades. (13) According to one of the Gulag-inmates, who encountered several of the former Nazino-inhabitants in a prison at Tomsk, the former “settlers” of Nazino appeared to him like “walking corpses.” (14) They were imprisoned at Tomsk for their cannibalistic activities, even though it was cannibalism that had kept them alive while on Nazino.