The Cold War was basically the U.S. and Russia playing a long game of chicken, only instead of cars, they were driving entire continents. It's a miracle we lived through it at all, considering how aggressively anti-communist the U.S. was, and how aggressively hardcore Russia is, and always has been. For example ...

5 Stalin Sent 6,000 People To "Cannibal Island." Oh Yeah, He Also Created "Cannibal Island"

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Can you believe that both poor people and petty criminals had the unbelievable gall to exist in 1930s Russia? If people were to see all those undesirables, why, they might think that communism wasn't actually a perfect utopia. Something had to be done, and seeing as Soylent Green hadn't yet been invented, Stalin decided on the next best thing: Cannibal Island.

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"Let them eat cake each other."

In 1933, 6,114 people classified as "outdated elements," which is both a strangely innocuous name for people so unwelcome they were sentenced to death, as well as a pretty sweet title for our '80s techno band. The outdated elements were sent to Nazino Island in Siberia. 27 of them died on the journey.

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They were the smart ones.

Anyone who tried to escape was hunted for sport by the soldiers. There were no shelters or animals on the island, little vegetation, and absolutely no food. It didn't take long for the prisoners to start eating the dead, and then helping the living become the dead a bit faster so they could eat them too. Here's a detailed account of a girl stranded on the island who suffered this very fate, but you shouldn't read it without first looking at pictures of kittens for an hour.