How political ideology and violence can lay waste to scientific achievement, and the resilience and resolve of scientists committed to their mission despite persecution, war and starvation, is the story Simon Parkin tells in The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in aCity Under Siege . When ace explorerbotanist Vavilov , who pledged his life “to preserve seeds for future use in agriculture, research and conservation” took charge of the Plant Institute in 1921 in what was then Petrograd, his predecessor had a collection of nearly 14,000 varieties of wheat, barley, oat, rye, other seeds and plants. Vavilov vowed to build a “treasury of all known crops”. Thereafter, the aim was to produce resilient supercops thatcould end famines.
But at the Plant Institute, Vavilov and his team found storage tins of seeds open and empty. Specimens had been eaten by famished staff or looters – famines were frequent. So, their work began from scratch – travelling the world especially for rare seeds, tubers, roots and bulbs to bring to the seed bank to be sorted, catalogued and stored.
By 1933, in the city renamed Leningrad, and Stalin in power, the botanists had collected 148,000 seeds and tubers from across the world. Trouble began when a former student argued Vavilov’s seed bank was a waste of resources, genetic engineering a pseudoscience. He promised Stalin quick-fix solutions for the food production crisis. It was in step with Stalin’s attacks on the intellectual elite. Parkin says, “Stalin approved of the idea that plants, like workers, could be transformed by an act of political will.” Picked up by secret police NKVD in 1940, Vavilov starved to death in the Gulag in 1943.
His team had little idea of Vavilov’s whereabouts. They continued to work. When Germany invaded in 1941, Moscow removed trainloads of the city’s treasures – art, scientific archives, books, even zoo animals but ignored the seed bank. What were the botanists to do? So it was that when the 872-day siege of Leningrad began, botanists guarded samples – 120 tonnes of seeds, including 6,000 varieties of potato, stored in packets in dozens of rooms – from shelling, rodents and frost.
Hitler had decided Leningrad “was to be starved into submission”. Food stocks were shelled, hunger became “the defining sensation in the city”. The siege, writes Parkin, “wiped out urbanite sentimentality towards animals. Researchers at the Physiological Institute ate Pavlov’s renowned dogs… police their service dogs.” Botanists stood guard, “the only people…faced with this ultimate and fundamental dilemma: to save a collection built to eradicate collective famine, or to use the collection to save themselves.” Between June 1, 1941 and Jan 1, 1942, 10 botanists died of starvation.
A potato expert survivor would say later, that starvation meant it was “unbearably difficult to get up every morning…move your hands and feet”, but not eating the collection wasn’t hard at all. “It was impossible to eat your life’s work, the life’s work of your friends and colleagues.”
Even after, when stories of war courage were told of Leningrad every day, how was Moscow to handle Vavilov, the brilliant botanist the state killed and the sacrifices of the Plant Institute botanists? It’s what science faces in times of authoritarian politics. By 1967, “a hundred million acres of Russian agricultural land had been planted with seeds derived from the Institute’s collection.” The botanists’ sacrifice ensured Russia’s future.
But at the Plant Institute, Vavilov and his team found storage tins of seeds open and empty. Specimens had been eaten by famished staff or looters – famines were frequent. So, their work began from scratch – travelling the world especially for rare seeds, tubers, roots and bulbs to bring to the seed bank to be sorted, catalogued and stored.
By 1933, in the city renamed Leningrad, and Stalin in power, the botanists had collected 148,000 seeds and tubers from across the world. Trouble began when a former student argued Vavilov’s seed bank was a waste of resources, genetic engineering a pseudoscience. He promised Stalin quick-fix solutions for the food production crisis. It was in step with Stalin’s attacks on the intellectual elite. Parkin says, “Stalin approved of the idea that plants, like workers, could be transformed by an act of political will.” Picked up by secret police NKVD in 1940, Vavilov starved to death in the Gulag in 1943.
His team had little idea of Vavilov’s whereabouts. They continued to work. When Germany invaded in 1941, Moscow removed trainloads of the city’s treasures – art, scientific archives, books, even zoo animals but ignored the seed bank. What were the botanists to do? So it was that when the 872-day siege of Leningrad began, botanists guarded samples – 120 tonnes of seeds, including 6,000 varieties of potato, stored in packets in dozens of rooms – from shelling, rodents and frost.
Hitler had decided Leningrad “was to be starved into submission”. Food stocks were shelled, hunger became “the defining sensation in the city”. The siege, writes Parkin, “wiped out urbanite sentimentality towards animals. Researchers at the Physiological Institute ate Pavlov’s renowned dogs… police their service dogs.” Botanists stood guard, “the only people…faced with this ultimate and fundamental dilemma: to save a collection built to eradicate collective famine, or to use the collection to save themselves.” Between June 1, 1941 and Jan 1, 1942, 10 botanists died of starvation.
A potato expert survivor would say later, that starvation meant it was “unbearably difficult to get up every morning…move your hands and feet”, but not eating the collection wasn’t hard at all. “It was impossible to eat your life’s work, the life’s work of your friends and colleagues.”
Even after, when stories of war courage were told of Leningrad every day, how was Moscow to handle Vavilov, the brilliant botanist the state killed and the sacrifices of the Plant Institute botanists? It’s what science faces in times of authoritarian politics. By 1967, “a hundred million acres of Russian agricultural land had been planted with seeds derived from the Institute’s collection.” The botanists’ sacrifice ensured Russia’s future.
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