Hunger and cannibalism (cannibalism) in Tsarist Russia. At the epicenter of tragedy

When you get acquainted with the history of the famine in the Volga region, it seems that you do not recognize reality, but you are watching a Hollywood trash horror. The future Nazi criminal, cannibals, the great polar explorer and church robbers appear here ... But, alas, this is not a fantasy, but real tragic events that happened on the banks of the Volga less than a century ago. And the weather anomalies served as the root cause of them.

"News from the fields" were held in high esteem during the Soviet Union. Many tons of grain found their place on newspaper pages and in the frames of news programs. Even now, on regional TV channels you can see stories dedicated to this topic. However, for most urban dwellers, winter and spring crops are nothing more than obscure agricultural topics. From the television screen, farmers can complain about heavy rainfall, severe drought and other surprises of nature. But we remain deaf to their moans. The presence of bread, like other products, is considered an eternal, unquestionable given. Agrarian cataclysms can only raise its price by a couple of rubles.

But less than a century ago, our province was at the epicenter of a humanitarian catastrophe, and bread began to be valued worth its weight in gold. But first things first.

Causes of hunger

The first prerequisite for a future catastrophe was the lean year of 1920. Only 20 million poods of grain were harvested in the Volga region. While in 1913 its number reached 146.4 million pounds. The spring of 1921 brought an unprecedented drought. In the Samara province, already during May, winter crops perished, and spring crops began to dry up. The lack of rain and the appearance of grasshopper locusts that ate the remains of the surviving crop caused the death of almost 100% of the crops by the beginning of July. As a result, more than 85% of the population of the Samara province were starving.

Almost all the food stocks that remained with the peasants were seized in the previous year during the so-called "surplus appraisal". In a nutshell, this term means food weaning. Mostly among the peasantry. Moreover, among the “kulaks” it was carried out on a “free of charge” basis (by way of requisition). Others were paid money for this at the established state tariffs. The so-called "food detachments" were in charge of the process.

An interesting fact - the future chairman of the "People's Court of Justice" of the Third Reich, Roland Freisler, while in Russia from 1918 to 1920 (he was captured in the First World War and later became a member of the CPSU (b)) - served as a food order commissar.

Many of them did not like the prospect of forced sale or seizure of food at all. The peasants began to take preventive "measures". All surpluses and stocks of bread were subject to “utilization” - they ate it, mixed it into animal feed, sold it to speculators, simply hid or brewed moonshine on its basis. Initially, “surplus appraisal” extended to bread and grain fodder. In the procurement campaign of 1919-1920. potatoes and meat were added to them, and by the end of 1920, almost all agricultural products. After the surplus appropriation of 1920, the peasants were forced to eat seed grain already in the autumn of this year.

The geography of the regions affected by the famine was very wide. The south of modern Ukraine, the Volga region (from the Caspian Sea to Udmurtia), the Southern Urals, part of Kazakhstan.

Actions of the authorities

The situation was stalemate. The Soviet government did not have food reserves. In this regard, in July 1921, it was decided to seek help from the capitalist countries. The "damned" bourgeois were in no hurry to help the young republic, and the first, small humanitarian aid arrived only at the beginning of autumn. However, at the end of 1921-beginning of 1922, its number increased. Largely due to the active campaign organized by Fridtjof Nansen, the famous polar explorer and scientist.

We must get ahead of the Russian winter, which is slowly but surely coming from the north. Soon Russian waters will be covered with ice. Try to really understand what will happen when the Russian winter comes in earnest, and try to imagine what it means to have no food in these severe colds. The population of the whole region roams the devastated country in search of food. Men, women, children perish by the thousands in the snows of Russia. Try to imagine what that means! If you've ever experienced what it's like to fight hunger, fight against the terrible winter elements, then you will understand what the consequences are. I am sure that you will not be able to sit still and calmly answer that you are very sorry, but that you, to your great regret, can do nothing to help.

In the name of humanity, in the name of everything holy and noble, I appeal to you: after all, you have wives and children at home, so think about what it is like to see with your own eyes the death of millions of women and children.

While Western politicians were pondering what conditions to put forward to the Soviets in exchange for humanitarian aid, public and religious organizations in Europe and America got down to business. Their material assistance in the fight against hunger was very great.

The activities of the ARA (American Relief Administration), headed by the then US Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover (by the way, an ardent anti-communist), reached a particularly large scale. On February 9, 1922, her contribution to the fight against hunger amounted to 42 million dollars. Against 12.5 spent by the Soviet government.

The Bolsheviks were not idle either. In June 1921, by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, the Central Commission for Assistance to the Starving (Central Committee Pomgol) was organized. She was endowed with emergency powers in the field of food supply and distribution. Similar commissions were also formed locally. There was an active purchase of bread abroad. Particular attention was paid to the organization of assistance to the peasants in the winter sowing of 1921 and the spring sowing of 1922. For these purposes, about 55 million poods of seeds were purchased.

The famine became an occasion for the Soviet authorities to deliver a knockout blow to the church. On January 2, 1922, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution "On the liquidation of church property." At the end of February, it was confirmed by a corresponding decree. The goal was declared to be good - the proceeds from the sale of church valuables were to be used to purchase food, medicines and other necessary goods. As a result, during 1922 church property worth 4.5 million gold rubles was seized. Huge amount. Naturally, not all of it was spent on the fight against hunger and its consequences. Only 20-30% was spent for these purposes. The main part of these millions was "spent" on kindling the fire of the world revolution.

Consequences of the famine

About 5 million people died from the famine and its consequences. In the Samara region, the death rate increased by 4 times. It reached 13%. Children suffered the most from hunger. There were cases when parents got rid of extra mouths. Even cases of cannibalism were not isolated. The same children who survived, as a rule, became orphans, replenishing the army of thousands of homeless children.

The famine years, unfortunately, will be repeated very soon in 1932-1933. However, for the Samara region, it will be more "sparing". This time, Ukraine and southern Russia will suffer the most.

Memoirs of eyewitnesses and a trace in fiction

The famine of 1921-1922 is described in the story of our countryman A.S. Neverov - “Tashkent is a city of bread”. In simple, intelligible words, he talks about the misfortune that has fallen on the people:

Grandfather died, grandmother died, then father. Mishka remained only with his mother and two brothers. The youngest is four years old, the middle one is eight. Mishka himself is twelve ... Mother is sick from hunger. Today he cries, tomorrow he cries, but hunger does not regret at all. Now they carry a man to the cemetery, then two at once. Uncle Mikhail died, aunt Marina died. Every home prepares for the dead. There were horses with cows, and they ate them, they began to catch dogs and cats.

Isn't it true that this passage of the story is similar to the diary of Tanya Savicheva? Criticism reacted to this work very cool, but it was allowed to print. But in the mid-1930s, she was on the "prohibited" list. The disgrace from the work of Neverov was removed during the Khrushchev thaw. In 1968, based on his motives, a film of the same name was shot, on the script of which Andrei Konchalovsky and Andrei Tarkovsky worked.

But the harsh reality of those years was much darker than a literary work can convey.

In the rich steppe districts of the Samara province, which abounded in bread and meat, nightmares are happening, an unprecedented phenomenon of wholesale cannibalism is observed. Driven by hunger to despair and madness, having eaten everything that is available to the eye and tooth, people decide to eat a human corpse and secretly devour their own dead children. In the village of Lyubimovka, one of the citizens dug a 14-year-old girl out of the grave, chopped the corpse into several parts, put the body parts in cast iron ... When this "crime" was discovered, it turned out that the girl's head was "cut in two and scorched." The cannibal obviously failed to cook the corpse

Here is how the provincial instructor Alexander Zworykin describes the situation in his report dated February 15, 1922:

The population of the Stavropol district has eaten everything that can be eaten: tree bark, straw from the roofs, rags that have accumulated over the years, all surrogates up to and including katun. Horse feces are collected and processed fresh into food. Corpse eating is incredibly developed. Not only dead relatives are eaten, but corpses are also stolen from the barns, where all the dead are brought in anticipation of a group funeral. They bury in each village once every 10-14 days, 60-80 people each. Recently, the death rate has reached 10-12 people a day. There is no registration of deaths...

For many, eating a person is no longer considered a big crime - they say, this is no longer a person, but only his body, which will be devoured by worms in the ground anyway. Previously, they say, they did not eat carrion either, because it was considered a sin, but now they have eaten everything. They talk about it with a kind of dull indifference and calmness, and sometimes it seems that the conversation is about some kind of Danube herring, which is bigger, fatter, and cheaper.

Photographs taken in areas suffering from famine have been preserved.

Hunger is an acute shortage of food. Starvation leads to malnutrition and increased mortality among the population. The main reasons for this disaster may be too rapid population growth, crop failure, cold weather, or even government policy. Nowadays, people have learned to deal with this with the help of advanced agriculture.

Thanks to progress, it became easier to feed people, but in the Middle Ages this was difficult: hunger often raged all over the world, in addition, people died due to various diseases and from the cold. It is estimated that even in the enlightened 20th century, about 70 million people died of starvation. The worst thing is that people can go crazy from hunger and start eating other people in order to survive - there are many similar cases described in history.

1. Kanava labor camp

Kanawa is a former labor camp located in the northwestern desert region of Gansu Province, China. In the period from 1957 to 1961, 3,000 political prisoners were kept here - people who were suspected of being "right" were sent to a kind of concentration camp for re-education.

Initially, the prison was designed for only 40-50 criminals. Starting in the autumn of 1960, mass starvation raged in the camp: people ate leaves, tree bark, worms, insects, rats, waste, and finally resorted to cannibalism.

By 1961, 2,500 out of 3,000 prisoners had died, and the 500 who survived had to feed on dead people. Their stories are recorded in the book of Yan Xianhui, who then traveled throughout the northwestern region of the Chinese desert to interview survivors of this nightmare. The book is somewhat fictionalized and includes graphic sections in which people eat other people's body parts or feces.

However, the cannibalism in The Ditch was real, too much so. In most cases, the corpses were so thin that it was difficult to feed on them. The events in The Ditch are reflected in the film of the same name, which tells about people who are forced to cope with physical exhaustion, hypothermia, hunger and death.

2. Famine in Jamestown

Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in America. The settlement was established on May 24, 1607 as part of the London Campaign. Jamestown served as the capital of the colony until 1699, when it was moved to Williamsburg.

The town was located on the territory of the Powhatan Confederation of Indian Tribes - about 14 thousand native Indians lived here, and European settlers had to rely on trade with them, there was nowhere else to buy food. But after a series of conflicts, the trade ended.

In 1609, disaster struck when a third food ship bound for Jamestown from England was wrecked and stuck on the reefs of Bermuda. The ship was carrying food to the village, but due to the wreck, Jamestown was left without food for the winter. Later it became known that Captain Samuel Argall returned to England and warned officials about the plight of Jamestown, but no more ships were sent to the shores of America.

In the winter of 1609, a massive famine broke out: hundreds of colonists died a terrible death, and by 1610, out of 500 people, only 60 remained alive. Excavations show that the survivors resorted to cannibalism - notches were found on human bones, indicating the cutting of muscles from bones . A female skull was also found with holes in the forehead and back of the head, which suggests that someone tried to literally eat her brain. How widespread cannibalism was in Jamestown remains unclear.

3. Great Famine 1315–1317

During the Middle Ages in Europe, famine was very common, usually due to poor harvests, overpopulation, and diseases like the plague. Britain, for example, during the Middle Ages experienced 95 cases of mass famine. Between 1348 and 1375, life expectancy in England averaged only 17.33 years.

From 1310 to 1330 the weather in Northern Europe was very bad and completely unpredictable. In 1315, the price of food rose sharply, which caused the spread of famine. In some places, prices have tripled, and people have had to grow plants, roots, herbs, nuts, and bark. In 1317, thousands of people died every week, and in three years, a famine killed millions.

Social rules ceased to operate during the famine - many parents abandoned their children. In fact, such a time formed the basis of the famous fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel". Some parents at that time killed their children and ate them. There is also evidence that prisoners had to eat the corpses of other prisoners, and some people even stole bodies from graves.

4. Siege of Leningrad

In June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, launching Plan Barbarossa, the largest military invasion in history. According to the plan, it was necessary to first capture Leningrad, then the Donets Basin, and then Moscow.

Hitler needed Leningrad because of its military importance, industry, and symbolic past. With the help of the Finnish army, the Nazis surrounded the city and kept it under siege for 872 days. The Germans wanted to force the people to surrender the city by starving them to death and cut off all food supplies.

People had to live without any utilities (water and energy). In modern history, the blockade is the largest cause of death. It has been estimated that about 1.5 million people died as a direct result of the siege. Of the original 3.5 million people who lived in Leningrad, only 700,000 survived the war.

Shortly after the siege began, all shops in the city closed. As expected, the money was no longer worth anything. To steal food, people even strayed into groups. As a result, people had to eat leather, furs, lipsticks, spices and medicines, but the hunger became more and more ferocious. Social rules gradually mattered less and there were reports of the spread of cannibalism.

During the siege, cannibalism reached such proportions that the police had to organize a special unit to catch the "predators". Despite the fact that everyone already lived in fear of a potential bombing, families were forced to deal with this threat as well. After the war, scientists began to use this information to study hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases.

5. Great Famine in Ireland

The Great Famine was a period of massive famine that broke out in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. It is also known as the Irish Potato Famine because potato blight was a direct cause of food shortages.

As in many cases, this was due to stupid government reforms that led some historians to call the event a genocide. Despite the fact that about a million people died of starvation and another million fled from Ireland, the British government could not help.

The famine forever changed the demographic and political landscape of Ireland. It caused tensions between Ireland and the British crown, and eventually led to Irish independence. During the famine, the vast majority of people in Ireland were malnourished, causing terrible infections to spread. Some of the deadliest diseases were measles, tuberculosis, respiratory tract infections, whooping cough, and cholera.

In 2012, Professor Cormac O'Grada of the University of Dublin suggested that cannibalism was common during the Great Famine. O'Grada relied on a number of written accounts, such as the story of John Connolly from the west of Ireland, who ate meat from the body of his dead son.

Another case was published on May 23, 1849, and told of a hungry man "pulling out the heart and liver from a drowned man who was thrown ashore after a shipwreck." In some cases, severe hunger forced people to eat family members.

6. Battle of Suiyan

In 757, the battle of Suiyan took place between the Yang rebel army and the loyal forces of the Tang army. During the battle, the Yan tried to besiege the Suiyan region in order to take control of the territory south of the Huai River. The Yan greatly outnumbered the Tang in strength, but to defeat the enemy, they needed to penetrate thick walls. General Zhang Xun was in charge of protecting the city.

Zhang Xun had 7,000 soldiers to defend Suiyan, while Yang's army had 150,000. Despite the siege and daily assaults, the Tang army managed to hold off Yang's onslaught for many months. However, by August 757, all the animals, insects, and plants in the city had been eaten. Zhang Xun tried several times to get food from nearby fortresses, but no one came to help. The deathly hungry people tried to convince Zhang Xun to surrender, but he refused.

According to the Old Book of Tang, when the food in Suiyan ran out, "people began to eat the bodies of the dead, and sometimes killed their own children." Zhang Xun admitted that the situation had become critical, so he killed his assistant and invited others to eat his body. At first the soldiers refused, but soon they ate the flesh without a twinge of conscience. So at first they ate all the women in the city, and when the women ran out, the soldiers began to hunt the old men and young men. In total, according to the Book of Tang, the soldiers killed and ate between 20,000 and 30,000 people.

There were too many cannibals in Suiyan, and by the time the Yang took the city, only 400 people remained alive. Yang tried to convince Zhang Xun to join his ranks, but he refused and was killed. Three days after the fall of Suiyan, a large Tang army arrived and retook the area, beginning the fall of Great Yang.

7. Famine in North Korea

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union demanded compensation from North Korea for all of its aid, past and present. In 1991, when the USSR collapsed, trade between the two countries ceased, and this had a deplorable effect on the economy of North Korea - the country could no longer produce enough food to feed the entire population, and in the DPRK between 1994 and 1998 there was a massive famine that killed between 250,000 and 3.5 million people. It was especially difficult for women and young children.

Meat was difficult to obtain, and some people resorted to cannibalism. People became extremely suspicious of the food vendors, and children were not allowed out into the streets at night. There are reports that "people went crazy from hunger and even killed and ate their own babies, robbed graves and ate corpses." Parents were in a panic: their children could be kidnapped, killed and sold in the form of meat.

In 2013, reports began to surface that famine broke out again in North Korea due to economic sanctions. The lack of food was the reason that people were forced to resort to cannibalism again. One report says that a man and his grandson were caught digging up a corpse for food. According to another report, a group of men were caught boiling children. Due to the fact that North Korea keeps everything that happens inside the country a secret, the government has not confirmed or denied recent reports of cannibalism.

8. Holodomor

In the early 1930s, the government of the Soviet Union decided that it would be more profitable to replace all individual peasant farms with collective ones. This was supposed to increase food supplies, but instead led to one of the biggest famine outbreaks in history. The collectivization of the land meant that the peasants were forced to sell most of their crops at a very low price. The workers were forbidden to eat their own crops.

In 1932, the Soviet Union was unable to produce enough grain, and the country experienced a massive famine that killed millions. The most affected areas are Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, the South Urals and Western Siberia. In Ukraine, the famine was particularly severe. In history, it has been preserved under the name Holodomor. The famine killed three to five million people, and according to the Kyiv Court of Appeal, there were ten million deaths, including 3.9 million victims and 6.1 million birth defects.

During the Holodomor, cannibalism was widespread in Ukraine. People formed gangs, killed their family members and ate dead children. Soviet officials issued posters reading: "Feeding your own children is barbaric."

There was a case where a man named Miron Yemets and his wife were caught cooking their children and sentenced to ten years in prison. It has been estimated that some 2,500 people were arrested for cannibalism during the Holodomor, with the vast majority driven insane by the massive famine.

9. Famine in the Volga region

In 1917, at the end of the First World War, a civil war broke out in Russia between the Bolshevik Red Army and the White Army. During this time, political chaos, extreme violence, and Russia's economic isolation have fueled the spread of disease and food shortages in many areas.

By 1921, in Bolshevik Russia, limited food supplies and drought caused widespread famine that threatened the lives of more than 25 million people in the Volga and Ural regions. By the end of 1922, the famine had killed about five to ten million people.

During the famine, thousands of Soviet citizens left their homes in search of food. People had to eat grass, dirt, insects, cats, dogs, clay, horse harness, carrion, animal skins, and eventually resort to cannibalism. So many people ate their family members and hunted for human meat.

Cases of cannibalism were reported to the police, but they did nothing, since cannibalism was considered a method of survival. According to one report, a woman was caught cooking human meat. She later admitted that she killed her daughter for food.

It was reported that policemen were forced to defend cemeteries attacked by hungry crowds. People started selling human organs on the black market and cannibalism became a problem in prisons. Unlike most historical cases of cannibalism, there are even photographs of cannibals, which depict starving people sitting next to tormented human bodies. There is also evidence that people killed abandoned children to eat.

10 Great Chinese Famine

Between 1958 and 1961, a massive famine broke out in China. The food shortage was caused by drought, bad weather, and the Great Leap Forward, an economic and political campaign by the Chinese government. According to official statistics, about 15 million people died.

Historian Frank Dikotter suggested that at least 45 million people died. Almost all Chinese citizens did not have enough food, the birth rate was reduced to a minimum. In China, this period is called the Trigorky Years.

When the situation got worse, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong committed crimes against the people: he and his subordinates stole food and left millions of peasants to starve. Doctors were forbidden to list "starvation" as the cause of death.

A man named Yu Dehong said, “I went to a village and saw 100 corpses. In another village, there were 100 more corpses. Nobody paid any attention to them. People said that the corpses were eaten by dogs. Not true, I said. The people have already eaten the dogs.” A huge number of citizens went crazy from hunger and violence.

During the great famine, there were numerous reports of cannibalism. People lost all moral principles and often ate human flesh. Some ate their own children, others switched children so as not to feel terrible about eating their own. Most of the food in China was human, and some parts of the country were inhabited by cannibals. Cannibalism during this famine has been called "an unprecedented event in the history of the 20th century."

Touching upon such an eternally relevant topic as cannibalism, one cannot but recall Vladimir Semenovich Vysotsky:

But why did the natives eat Cook?

For what? It is not clear - science is silent.

It seems to me a very simple thing - they wanted to eat and ate Cook.

But there is, however, another assumption,

That Cook was eaten out of great respect.

That the sorcerer, the sly and the evil one incited everyone:

- Atu, guys, grab Cook.

Who will gobble it up without salt and without onions,

He will be strong, brave, kind, like Cook.

But jokes aside, this is a serious matter. It should be noted that Vysotsky, being neither an ethnographer nor a biologist, in fact correctly named here the two main motives for cannibalism: hunger and ritual customs.

HUNGER NOT Aunt

The name "cannibals" comes from the word " caniba"- so in pre-Columbian times, the inhabitants of the Bahamas called the inhabitants, terrible cannibals. Subsequently, the name "cannibal" became equivalent to an anthropophagus (from the Greek anthropos- "man" and fageyn - "to absorb"). It should be noted that a cannibal is always a cannibal, but not every cannibal, such as a predatory beast, is a cannibal. This "title" is awarded only to a person.

Cannibalism has been around since the Stone Age. With the increase in food resources obtained by man, it has been preserved, but only as an exceptional phenomenon caused by famine in certain periods (crop failure, etc.). In particular, the lack of food explains the cannibalism of Neanderthals. Ritual cannibalism persisted longer. It was expressed in the eating of various parts of the body of killed enemies, dead relatives, and was based on the belief that the strength and other virtues of the slain person passed to the eater of his flesh. Sometimes, however, the results were the opposite: for example, in some tribes where the eating of the brain of the victim was customary, the incurable disease kuru spread. But one should not assume that the times of cannibalism have sunk forever into eternity, and the traditions of cannibalism have remained attributes of ancient times. No, they successfully survived all the stages of the formation of human society and have survived to this day. The geography of cannibalism is still wide.

HABITS ARE SECOND NATURE

In modern times (since the 16th century), cannibalism was noted among many peoples, in all parts of the world (including Europe). It was practiced in inner Africa, in Papua New Guinea, on some islands of the Malay Archipelago, in the interior regions. Until the 20th century, cannibalism was not uncommon on many of the islands of Polynesia, and in South Africa. There are many examples of this.

In the 17th century, the natives of one of the islands of Oceania completely ate all the crew of the pirate John Davis Jr. who was captured by them as a result of a shipwreck. The captain himself miraculously escaped this fate.

In 1772, the French traveler M. Marion-Dufren, along with 14 of his associates, was captured by the New Zealand Maori. All of them were killed and eaten.

In the same way, the famous navigator, who completed three round-the-world trips, James Cook, the same one whom V. Vysotsky recalled, ended his life. It happened in 1779 in Hawaii. Cook had already encountered cannibals during his first trip around the world. Then he gave them pigs, sheep and goats to wean them from cannibalism. But the experiment failed: the natives could not understand what the whites still wanted from them. They quickly ate the cattle, and then returned to eating captured enemies and travelers who wandered into their region. And how many missionaries were eaten who came to convert savages into the bosom of the church, and do not count!

Anthropologist G. Eremin commented on this as follows: “On the islands, where there was enough animal food, cannibalism was not known. On other islands, cannibalism is explained by the lack of animal proteins in the body of the natives, with an excess of vegetable proteins obtained by eating sweet potatoes and corn.

MY RELATIVE - I WILL TAKE IT!

Historical sources have survived that tell about mass cannibalism during a famine caused by a protracted drought (1200-1201). There were rumors of cannibalism during the First Crusade, when the crusaders allegedly fed on the bodies of enemies from the captured Arab city of Maarra. Later, historians tried to remove these shameful facts from the descriptions of campaigns, but ... you can’t erase a word from a song.

The historian K. Valishevsky wrote about the Poles and Lithuanians besieged in the Kremlin in 1612: “They began to kill their captives, and with the intensification of feverish delirium, they reached the point that they began to devour each other. And this is a fact that cannot be doubted: the eyewitness Budzilo told terrible details about the last days of the siege - the strongest used the weak, and the healthy - the sick. They quarreled over the dead, and the most amazing ideas of justice were mixed with the strife generated by cruel madness. So, one soldier complained that people from another company ate his relative, while in fairness he himself should have eaten. The accused referred to the rights of the entire regiment to the corpse of a fellow soldier, and the colonel did not dare to stop this strife, fearing that the losing side would eat him out of revenge.

And yet the reader has the right to notice that all this is a matter of old. Let's see what happened later.

CURRENT REALITIES

In New Zealand in 1809, 66 passengers and crew members of the Boyd brigantine were killed and eaten by Maori tribes.

In November 1820, sailors escaping from the sunken whaling ship Essex resorted, by common consent, to cannibalism so that at least someone could survive (this story was partly included in G. Melville's novel Moby Dick).

In the 1920-1930s, numerous cases of cannibalism were recorded in the Volga region, and during the mass famine.

There is documentary evidence of cannibalism in Japanese troops during World War II. When they ran out of food, Japanese soldiers killed and dismembered enemy soldiers. A well-known incident occurred in 1945, when Japanese soldiers killed and ate eight captured American pilots. This case was investigated in 1947, 30 Japanese were put on trial, including five senior officers, including a general and an admiral, who were hanged.

In the terrible years of the Leningrad blockade, already in December 1941, the first cases of cannibalism were recorded. It is known from the archives of the NKVD: in December 1941, 26 cannibals were prosecuted, and in January-February 1942 - already 860. Later, until January 1943, their number only increased. Most of the detainees were shot. In January 2014, Daniil Granin, himself a blockade fighter and a militia fighter, spoke about this in his emotional speech in the German Bundestag.

The World War ended, but cannibalism did not end there. More recently, in Yakutia, fishermen, getting lost in the taiga and starving, killed and ate one of their company. The court sentenced each of the survivors to 3.5 years of probation. Why such liberalism? The fact of the murder was not unequivocally proven - perhaps the victim died himself, and there is no article for cannibalism in the Russian Criminal Code. The motive for the crime in this story is clear: hunger. And how to qualify the story that happened 10 years ago in the Bavarian Rotenburg? Its resident, adhering to non-traditional sexual inclinations, a certain Armin Meiwes, found a masochist partner via the Internet and invited him to his place, where he was castrated by mutual consent. While drinking, they ate genitals together, after which the owner killed the guest and ate him almost entirely. Today, the cannibal is serving time, in prison he heads the green party cell and enjoys authority.

These are the realities of today's civilized Europe.

Throughout history, cannibalism has followed hand in hand with man. This ominous phenomenon reminds us that life can be cruel and contradictory. It even gives the impression that cannibalism is created by nature itself. Take, for example, the fact that the female tarantula, after mating, kills the male and eats him whole. Female pigs or rats eat their brood during hunger. And there are many examples of this. Not escaped this, alas, and man. It is not known how other inhabitants of the planet are, but a person who has tasted human meat, without noticing it, becomes a passionate admirer of human flesh. And getting rid of it is almost impossible.

GULAG on an allied scale

Where did the zekovskaya "tradition" to eat each other in difficult times come from? It must be assumed that all this began in the distant pre-war years, when the whole country was turned into a huge Gulag. It was then, after the brutal purges, that thousands and thousands of most often innocent people found themselves in places of detention without heat and without food. One such place was Nazino Island in Siberia. In May 1933, about seven thousand prisoners from among the deported element were landed here.

If we discard isolated cases of cannibalism, then it was there that mass cannibalism was first recorded. Here is a quote from one book: "All over the island you could see how they cut, tear and eat human flesh. Everything around was littered with disfigured corpses." Indeed, in order to somehow survive, the prisoners ate human corpses scattered around the island.

Immediately there appeared those who "worked ahead of the curve" - ​​they killed the first one who fell and immediately, almost alive, ate him. It was from those nightmarish times that words appeared in criminal use that are usually put in quotation marks: calves, cows, canned food. It was not customary for us to talk about this for many years - after all, there could not be cannibalism in the Soviet country!

"Canned food" for a convict

Cannibalism did not disappear even when everything was settled with food. The history of escapes from taiga camps is full of tragic examples, when a fugitive, not knowing the local conditions, found himself face to face with the taiga, and died of cold and hunger, a slow and painful death. Usually, they prepared for the escape for a long time and thoroughly - they stocked up with warm and durable clothes, some kind of edged weapons, and always a supply of food. But how much food can a fugitive take with him?!

There is no need to talk about getting food in the forest, because he himself becomes a game. That is why an experienced prisoner, as a rule, took with him on his escape the same inmate as himself. Took to be eaten, as a "cow". While still in the zone, he fed him, counting on soft and tasty meat. After all, he will have to eat this meat for more than one day, and even more than one week.

If a whole group leaves for such an escape, then each of them risks their lives to one degree or another. Each of those who escaped can become a cow - after all, a convict who is hungry to madness does not care whether you are a friend, an authority, or a small fry. In this case, having finished with the first cow, the next one is "appointed", then the next one.

In Kolyma, escaping in the winter is equal to suicide, but in the summer or in the fall, some of the prisoners still try to go free. Once a recidivist Semyon Bolotnikov, nicknamed Boloto, fled. He was hopelessly ill with tuberculosis, and in the depths of his soul he even dreamed of getting a bullet from the tower. But, on reflection, he nevertheless decided to accept death in the wild, where neither the barking of dogs nor the shouts of the guards are heard. As canned meat, he took with him Fyodor, a young prisoner, winding up a term for robbery. He persuaded him to escape, crushing him with his authority and heady air of freedom. On the third day of wandering through the tundra, Semyon felt a brutal appetite. "You're sorry, sidekick," he muttered and stuck a sharp sharpener in Fedka's chest...

Private Prokopiev was then part of the search group, and he ran into Bolotnikov simply by accident. By this time, he had already butchered the body of his "sidekick", and fried large pieces of meat on a fire. One of them, champing loudly, he held in his hand. Taken aback by what he saw, the soldier even forgot about his duties. Coming to his senses, he rushed at the fugitive prisoner, ready to strangle him with his bare hands. Boloto was an experienced criminal, besides, the meat he had just eaten gave him additional strength. Seeing a soldier flying at him, he simply put forward the sharpening ...

Death to the peasant!

So, in a country that is a large Gulag, the rules were also appropriate. The reason for the famine in the villages and villages was the most banal. The peasant, as you know, is fed by the earth. When the communists came to power, the slogan "Land to the peasants!" appeared. But it was only a slogan! In fact, many peasants not only did not receive the promised land, but also lost what they had. Naturally, mass discontent arose, threatening to develop into a peasant war. The most restless in this regard were Ukraine, the North Caucasus and some regions of the Black Earth region. Terrible repressions followed - by the end of 1931, about two million members of the "kulak" families were evicted without a livelihood. Half of them died of starvation on the way to the places of exile or already in the place of exile. But the Soviet government did not stop there - on August 7, 1932, a murderous law was adopted: for theft of collective farm property - 10 years in the camps or the death penalty!

By the way, if a hungry peasant grabbed a few spikelets left after harvesting from the field, he fell under the same law. As terrible statistics testify, then several thousand children under the age of 12 were shot for stealing spikelets. But these children simply did not want to die of hunger! And how many of their fathers and grandfathers were shot, one can only guess. And on January 22, 1933, a circular signed by Stalin and Molotov was issued. He instructed the local authorities, and in particular the organs of the OGPU, to prevent the mass outflow of peasants to the cities. This step cannot be called otherwise than a sentence to starvation. And the peasant had no choice but to replenish the already numerous army of cannibals.

In the famine years, real raids were carried out on cannibals. First of all, they were searched for in the villages, often destroyed on the spot. So, in the collective farm. Stalin, Elanetsky district, a 10-year-old girl disappeared. Literally the next day, cannibals were detained in the house of a 34-year-old widow. A dead child was also found, from which the woman was going to cook food. The accused confessed that together with her cohabitant they killed four children within two weeks. With the help of her 8-year-old daughter, the woman invited them to her apartment, where she killed them. After that, she cooked food for herself, her roommate and her daughter.

Hunger is not an aunt

The constant, maddening feeling of hunger drove people to madness and pushed them not only to eat the dead, but also to kill even their own children. Here is a terrible confession: “In 1932, together with my wife and son Zakhary, we worked 400 workdays on the collective farm, for which we received five kilograms of millet and 4 kg of flour in the fall. This was enough for my family only for five days, and for the winter we were left without funds for existence. So I killed the youngest daughter Christia - she was so emaciated that she could not even stand up. I chopped the body, or rather the bones, into pieces and cooked it. I ate it myself and fed the eldest daughter Nastya. A week later I killed Nastya - from exhaustion she I would have died anyway. I killed both the eldest and the youngest daughter when they were sleeping. I took them off the bed, laid them on the floor and chopped off their heads with an ax blow. Then I chopped them into pieces ... ".

And here is an extract from the protocol of interrogation of a peasant woman Chugunova: “I am a widow, I have four children in my arms. The youngest, 7-year-old daughter, was very ill. ", and I decided to kill her. I stabbed her at night, sleeping. Sleepy and weak, she did not scream and did not resist even when she realized that they would cut her. Then my eldest daughter began to cut her into pieces."

According to another cannibal, Ekaterina Rubleva, at one time she and her daughter lived with a peasant woman in the village of Kamenki, Pugachevsky district. Eight people lived with them in the house. The famine was unbearable, and when small children began to die, a large family, eating them, was able to survive. Once, when there was absolutely nothing to eat, a grandmother of about 70 years old asked for a lodging for the night. At night, when she was sleeping, the hostess, with a knife in her hand, called Ekaterina and her daughter, and with the words: “Now we will have meat again,” she ordered to keep the old woman. Rubleva began to refuse, but she threatened: "I do not intend to remain without meat - either she or you!" The sleeping grandmother was slaughtered and chopped into pieces, from which soup was cooked for several days. When the hostess herself fell ill and died, the Rublevs sawed her into pieces and ate all Christmas.

Not only GPU workers with a wide network of informers, but also rural activists and doctors were involved in the neutralization of cannibals. There was even a secret directive of the GPU on the imputation of the duty of medical workers to kill cannibals, while documenting the facts of their death. In the spring of 1933, the OGPU in the North Caucasus region reported: "From February to April 1, 108 cases of cannibalism were detected. In total, 244 people engaged in cannibalism were identified, of which 49 were men, 130 were women, and 65 were accomplices (underage family members)."

Who are all these people - criminals, mentally deranged? Neither one nor the other! Here is an extract from the act of a forensic medical examination signed by a Privatdozent of Samara University: “All the examined signs of mental disorder were not found. ".

Will the war write everything off?

Little has changed during the Great Patriotic War. Particularly then, the areas suffered, where everything was taken to the last grain for the front and the Victory. On the one hand, this is how it should be - everything for the army, everything for victory. But on the other hand - after all, people in the rear also forged victory! There is a saying that war will write everything off. Will she write off what happened in besieged Leningrad? Mass cases of cannibalism in the so-called cradle of the revolution were strictly classified. This, of course, is understandable: the recognition of this nightmare is insulting to the participants in the heroic defense of the city. Judging by a secret report sent to the regional party committee, in February 1942 more than 600 people were convicted of cannibalism, and in March more than a thousand people.

It should be noted that there were quite objective reasons for the appearance of mass cannibalism in the city. From constant hunger, many people lost their minds, and they, as they say, did not know what they were doing. The next reason can be called a sharp jump in crime. Hungry criminals, deserters and similar rabble could no longer feed on raids and thefts, because the only value was food, which was practically non-existent. They also could not surrender to the authorities: according to the laws of wartime, they were expected to be shot. And the last reason for cannibalism - a huge number of ownerless corpses appeared on the streets of the city. It was they who became at the same time the main reason for the appearance of numerous cannibals, and their desired object.

The situation was no better in other regions. The first case of cannibalism in the Chelyabinsk region occurred in the city of Zlatoust. On January 1, 1943, a male dismembered corpse was discovered in the house of a certain Grigory Antonov. It was neatly folded into a bag and buried in the underground. Detained on suspicion of murder, Antonov confessed to the crime. Mikhail Leontiev, who lives with him, was killed, whom he hacked to death with an ax in order to take possession of his bread card. But bread without meat, allegedly, is not food, and Antonov cut off the head of the murdered man, but he sawed him into pieces and hid him in the underground for a rainy day. He ate his heart, lungs, kidneys and liver along with his wife and children.

In total, several dozen cases of cannibalism were investigated on the territory of the Chelyabinsk region in 1943. Perhaps the most terrible of them occurred in the Nyazepetrovsky district. Polina Shulgina, having two young children in her arms, was left without a job and a livelihood. She found herself in such a difficult situation, she and her children ate slop - there was not even a dried crust of bread in the house. Having reached complete despair, the woman strangled six-year-old Dima and eleven-year-old Igor, and for some time consumed their meat for food.

Vladimir Lotokhin, Mr. Zlatoust

#cannibals,#lotokhin,#rainbow

TO MAIN

And the “troika” courts under the Collegium of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR sentenced peasants accused of cannibalism to 10 years in concentration camps or execution

While working in the special funds of the Branch State Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, I happened to read the materials of several hundred criminal cases initiated in 1933 against Ukrainian peasants who became cannibals during the Holodomor. This type of crime is not even provided for by the Criminal Code of Ukraine - neither of that time, nor of the current one. “Cannibalism”, “cannibalism”, “corpse eating” (the term “cannibalism” was not used then) was qualified as article 174 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR of 1927: “Robbery, that is, open, with the aim of taking possession of other people’s property, an attack by an individual, resulting in death or grievous bodily injury of the victim… “Under the “property of others” in such cases was meant… the human body.

“The liver and the heart of the sight of my girl I brewed i z” member

These criminal cases have not been touched since 1933. I untied the ribbons of another gray folder with a number affixed with a "chemical" purple pencil, read the yellowed pages - and ... frost was on my skin.

Here are just some fragments from the protocols of criminal cases (the style of the originals is completely preserved, the names of the persons involved in the cases are not indicated for ethical reasons. - Auth.).

I’ll add to the protocol Oksani Serguchvni G., 36 rokuv, unwritten, villager, everyday woman, widow, 3 soul sum "h, hut, for the sake of fame - not convicted of 1933 fate, fierce, 28 days from the village of Zozova, Lipovsky district, Vunnitskoch region.

“I was left at home with my daughter Oleksandra, yak 4 rocks, if my girl was sleeping on the stove, I took a knife, like a ruzala bread, I cut my girl Oleksandra. Why should I, having cut my whole belly, bled the liver in that heart, and bleed the blood with some hands into the miner.

Why did I take the slaughtered child, I brought it to the comor and put it in the night. The next day, a mui senior lad, a tsvan, came to feed me, de our Oleksandra. I wailed that Oleksandra died!

... I worked it all up for that, I was dying to pieces of hunger. Until then, I took two cats and two dogs, which I took at once with my breath. I’ve got some kind of boon, I’ve taken sulradoy into a kulkosta 8 pudding, I’ve lost my bread.

Written down at the reading of the menu about "clarified."

tz protocol dopitu Fedosui Zakharovich N., 45 rokuv. Having driven two daughters Anastasuya (12 years), Kharitina (9 years) into Zhu.

The village of Krasna Slobodka Kichvskoch region Cherkasy district.

“In 1932, together with my wife and son Zakhary, we worked 400 workdays on the collective farm, I didn’t have a single absenteeism, for which I received about 5 kilograms of millet and 4 kg of flour in the fall, which was enough for my family for 4-5 days , and for the winter I was left without any means of subsistence. The older sons left home, I continued to work on the collective farm, for which I received boiled food once a day - borsch from cabbage and beetroot without bread.

4. 04 I killed my youngest daughter Christia, who was so emaciated that she could no longer get up ... - the body, I chopped and boiled some bones, and ate it in two days. I also gave meat to my eldest daughter Nastya to eat, and on 6.04 at 5 o'clock in the morning I killed Nastya as well. I thought that I would support my strength with this, but Nastya would still die from exhaustion in a day or two ...

Both the first and the second, I killed the sleeping ones, took them off the bed, laid them on the earthen floor and cut off their heads with an ax with one blow ... I chopped the heads and bones into pieces and buried them.

I’ll finish the protocol with Tr Vasil Mironovich

m. Uman, vul. Proletarian, 1909 the fate of the people.

“Gerasim Kovtun died on the 3rd birch at the vun having lain with us for ten days at yogo nukhto wood without taking us away. Todu mi and mom violated poruzati ta z "usti m" yaso from that corpse ... Mi yogo schmuck already day 5 all four. A part of the m "yasa (tulub) was still lost from that part of the vchora, it was revealed.

They didn’t sell my yas. I can’t do anything more.”

And here is the act of medical examination concerning this criminal case of cannibalism:

The act of ship-medical examination N 118 of the Tr-th V. M.

“1933, on the 16th day of March ... in the office of the ship's medical examination, the hulk of Tr-go Vasil Mironovich was examined.

Looking around it was revealed: 23 rocky to the condemned.

Weak, swollen legs. Visible mucous membranes are pale, weakness when walking, complexion with a yellowish tint. He clearly orients himself in time, the surrounding space, remembers everything satisfactorily, did everything consciously, and stated that he ate meat from a person and will eat ...

Visnovok: I think that his general state of health is significantly weakened, and his psyche is normal.

District medical officer. Pudpis.

“In this state, people avoid unnecessary movements”

One can only imagine to what degree of physical and mental suffering a starving person had to go to decide on such a terrible atrocity!

This becomes clear when you get acquainted with the conclusion of physicians, in particular psychiatrists who have studied starving people: “In this state, people avoid unnecessary movements. This is facilitated by strong physical weakness - even in search of food, they get up with difficulty. They do not ask for alms, because they consider it in vain. In addition, without habit, they are not able to rise to the necessary initiative. Most of the time is spent lying down. As an exception, slow sudden impulses are observed.

Sleep in this period is very good ... Many starving people have hallucinations, mainly visual, much less often - auditory, sometimes kinetic. The darkening of consciousness gradually increases, and people pass into the terminal stage of hunger. The latter lasts from several hours to several days. The longest period of this state is twelve days. It always ends in death."

The most tragic thing is that prolonged hunger strikes the mechanisms of mental life that produce volitional actions. The mental disorders of the starving, almost imperceptible to non-specialists, could remain in the sphere of interest of psychiatrists, if they did not provide a key to understanding those destructive actions against civil and public life that hunger strikes are so rich in. Leaving the family and vagrancy, throwing children, suicide and an endless number of crimes committed during the famine, indicate the discord that the psyche of the starving people brought to the life of the people.

The phenomenon of cannibalism during the Holodomor acquired alarming proportions in Ukraine. I dare say that no country, no people in the entire history of the existence of human civilization has known such mass cannibalism. Judge for yourself: there are tens of thousands of settlements in Ukraine, and in each of them there were cannibals, in each of them dozens of facts of cannibalism were recorded.

But the struggle was not with the cause of the phenomenon - hunger, but with its consequences. To neutralize the cannibals, it was necessary to involve not only employees of the GPU, but also doctors, rural activists, and a wide network of informers created in the villages.

The existence of an unspoken decree of the GPU "to medical workers to kill cannibals" is confirmed by numerous published eyewitness accounts. Medical workers went around the villages and gave cannibals poisoned "baits" - a piece of meat or bread ... The facts of the death of cannibals were properly documented. For example:

Ukrainian SSR - NKKOZ

Pliskovskaya inspectorate protect healthy "I.

Pliskovskaya district lukarnya 03. 09. 1933 N 13/1

m. Pliskov

Gr. With. Andrushevka Paraska Grigoruvna A. died in Pliskovskaya Raylukarna on June 25, 1933.

Golovny lukar (punch).

Act of the commission on the fact of examining the corpse of citizen Oksana Sergeevna G.

On the thirtieth day of March 1933, a commission consisting of the head of the Lipovsky district of the GPU - Makov, the political inspector of police comrade Kanevsky, in the presence of comrade Mazur, drew up this act as follows: on this date, the corpse of citizen G. Oksana Sergeevna, a native of the village of Zozovo, was examined, it was established that death her from heart failure.

Commission

Lekpom (medical assistant)

Lipovets Polyclinic

(Subscript) Mazur.

In addition to covert methods, the fight against cannibalism was also carried out on “legal grounds”. The latter was carried out by the organs of the GPU.

Having carried out investigative actions on the facts of cannibalism, the detective sent the case to the investigation of the “troika” court under the Collegium of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR with a petition to apply to the accused “the highest measure of social protection - the death penalty - execution”. Court rulings, as a rule, are of the same type and laconic: 10 years in concentration camps, in other cases - execution.

10 years in the camps (he served his sentence in Solovki) was received by a resident of the Dymersky district of the Kyiv region, 29-year-old Vasily S., who, as evidenced by the materials of criminal case No. 15612, “suffocated his three children: Motru (1 year old), Ivan (5 years old), Maria (7 years old) is motivated by the fact that there is nothing to eat and feed the children. The meat of children was found salted in a dizhka. In 1938, the cannibal father applied to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR for a pardon. The answer came to him: “Considering the gravity of the crime committed, which could have been avoided with a conscious attitude towards socialist labor, it would be inappropriate to consider early release.”

How many of them, such “irresponsible”, appear in criminal cases! An “irresponsible” father turns over in a boat in the middle of the Dnieper along with three hungry children, thus saving himself and them from further torment ... An “irconscient” mother leaves a newborn child without breast milk in a locked hut. Feeding will exhaust her completely, and there are two more children in her arms. “I’ll go to the vukn, I’ll listen,” she says during interrogation, “but it’s all squeaking and squeaking. it’s so much longer than that, until it’s calmed down ... "

“When my mother died, I decided not to bury, but to eat her with my brother”

Corpse-eating in 1933 was completely commonplace. I will give a fragment from the criminal case N 14621: in the village of Starye Sanzhary, Poltava region, two sons - Grigory T. (22 years old) and Vasily T. (11 years old) - ate the corpse of their mother. “We lived with anything,” the older brother explained to the commissioner. - Eat dead horsemeat. When my mother died, I decided not to bury her, but to eat her with my brother ... Vasily is not to blame. There is a resolution in the case: “In view of the minority of Vasily T., send him to the Reformatorium (that was the name of the colonies for minors. - Auth.)”.

It is characteristic that both cannibalism and corpse-eating were qualified under the same article of the Criminal Code of the Soviet era. And there was only one sanction: "a measure of social protection - 10 years in concentration camps." It did not matter whether the deceased was consumed or killed alive. After all, the living would still become dead. From hunger! Obviously, this was the logic of the courts that passed sentences in these cases ...

There is no doubt that the Famine of 1933 was a genocide of the Ukrainian people, and not “food difficulties”, as one would like to imagine.

Are we right today to blame the hungry people who committed such grave crimes? Execution cannot be pardoned ... Where to put a comma? Let's put it before the word "pardon". But there is no forgiveness to the organizers of the terrible tragedy, through whose fault in the center of Europe on the richest black soil in the world, the hard-working grain-growing people were dying of starvation.