Nazino Island

Nazino Island is a small, uninhabited island in the Ob River in the Aleksandrovsky District of Tomsk Oblast, western Siberia. It is remembered for the Nazino tragedy of 1933, when several thousand people — labelled "special settlers" and deported during Stalinist campaigns of dekulakisation and social "cleansing" — were unloaded onto the island in May with almost no food, shelter, tools or guidance. Within weeks thousands died from starvation, cold, disease and violence, and documented cases of cannibalism led to the grim nickname "Cannibal Island." The disaster was exposed in an internal report and later studied in detail by historians and the Memorial society.

The island's terrible history has given it a sorrowful, haunted reputation in local memory. Out of respect for the scale of real suffering, any such reputation must be reported only briefly and never sensationalised; this is first and foremost a place of documented atrocity, not a ghost story.

Nazino stands as a searing site of memory of Stalinist repression. A memorial cross has been raised to commemorate the victims, and the island's genuine significance lies entirely in remembrance and in the historical record of what happened there.

Nazino is an uninhabited river island reached by boat from the nearby village of Nazino, in a remote part of Tomsk Oblast. There are no tourist facilities; a memorial cross marks the site in honour of those who died.

Any visit should be understood as an act of remembrance rather than sightseeing. Travellers should approach the island quietly and respectfully, be self-sufficient and mindful of river conditions, and treat it with the solemnity due to a place of mass death.