HEADLINE = The men who starved to death to save the world's seeds

STRAP = During the siege of Leningrad, a group of Russian botanists holed up in a secret Leningrad vault
starved to death rather than consume the greatest collection of seeds they were guarding for a post-
apocalyptic world. The man who had collected the seeds also died of starvation in Stalins prison.

In September 1941 when German forces began their siege of Leningrad (St Petersburg), choking food
supply to the citys two million residents, one group of people preferred to starve to death despite
having plenty of food.
As the invading Germans poured into the city, scientists and workers at the Institute of Plant Industry
(http://www.vir.nw.ru/) barricaded themselves inside their vaults. They were not trying to save their
lives but rather the future of humanity. For, they had the unenviable task of protecting the greatest seed
collection in the world from both hungry Soviet citizens and the rampaging German Army.
As the siege dragged out for 872 days, one by one these heroic men started dying of hunger. And yet not
one of them touched the treasure trove of seeds they were guarding literally with their lives.
Thats not where the cruel irony ends. The man who had been responsible for this great collection of
seeds, Nikolay Vavilov, Russian geneticist and plant geographer, lay dying of starvation in a Soviet
prison.
Seeding the future
Vavilov had travelled five continents to study the global food ecosystem. Calling it a mission for all
humanity, Vavilov conducted experiments in genetic breeding to increase farm productivity. Even as
Russia was undergoing revolutions, anarchy and famines, he went about amassing a vast collection of
seeds at the Institute of Plant Industry.
His dream was to eliminate recurring famines from Russia and the world. Vavilov dreamed of a utopian
future in which new agricultural practices and science could one day create a form of super plant that
would grow in any environment, thus ending world hunger.
He was one of the first scientists to really listen to farmers traditional farmers, peasant farmers
around the world and why they felt seed diversity was important in their fields, says Gary Paul
Nabhan, an ethnobiologist. (http://www.splendidtable.org/story/how-nikolay-vavilov-the-seed-
collector-who-tried-to-end-famine-died-of-starvation)
Nabhan who has chronicled Vavilov's life in Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's
Quest to End Famine, (http://www.amazon.com/Where-Our-Food-Comes-
From/dp/1610910036/?tag=tsplent-20) continues: All of our notions about biological diversity and
needing diversity of foods on our plates to keep us healthy sprung from his work 80 years ago. If justice
be done, he would be as famous as Darwin or Luther Burbank.
Stalins scapegoat
There wasnt much justice going around in Soviet dictator Joseph Stalins time. Vavilov wanted to
increase farm productivity to eliminate recurring Russian famines. Early on, he defended the Mendelian
theory that genes are passed on unchanged from one generation to the next. He became the main
opponent of Stalins favoured scientist, Trofim Lysenko, a Ukrainian.
Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics and developed a pseudoscientific movement termed Lysenkoism.
His experimental research in improved crop yields earned Stalins support, following the famine and loss
of productivity resulting from forced collectivization in several regions of the Soviet Union in the early
1930s. In fact, Lysenkos influence on Stalin ensured that scientific dissent from his theories of
environmentally acquired inheritance was formally outlawed in 1948.
Stalin's collectivisation of private farms had led to reduced yields across the Soviet Union. The dictator
now needed a scapegoat for his failure and the famine. He chose Vavilov. In Stalins warped view,
Vavilovs process of carefully selecting the best naturally occurring specimens of plants would take
numerous growing years.
Vavilov was collecting seeds on Russias borders when he was picked up by secret service agents. Amidst
the chaos of World War II, no one knew where he was. And though he was imprisoned just a few blocks
from where his son and his wife were staying, they had no clue he was there. Later, he was transferred
to a prison in Saratov.
Author Geoff Hall writes in Reading Nikolay Vavilov: (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/geoff-hall-
reading-nikolay-vavilov) Before his show trial, Stalins police, seeking a confession, had subjected Vavilov
to 1,700 hours of brutal interrogation over 400 sessions, some lasting 13 hours, carried out by an officer
known for his extreme methods. Before his arrest, during the long rise in influence of Lysenko, beginning
in the 1920s, Vavilov, unlike Galileo, had refused to repudiate his beliefs, saying, We shall go into the
pyre, we shall burn, but we shall not retreat from our convictions.
After over a year-and-a-half of eating frozen cabbage and moldy flour, he died of starvation, says
Nabhan. The man who taught us the most about where our food comes from and who tried for over 50
years to end famine in the world died of starvation in the Soviet gulag.
The year was 1943; the Germans were still in Leningrad. A dozen of Vavilovs scientists holed up in their
secret Leningrad vault starved to death while guarding their hoard of 370,000 seeds. Says Nabhan: One
of them said it was hard to wake up, it was hard to get on your feet and put on your clothes in the
morning, but no, it was not hard to protect the seeds once you had your wits about you. Saving those
seeds for future generations and helping the world recover after war was more important than a single
person's comfort.
Vavilovs legacy
Although Lysenkos 25-year domination of Soviet biology ensured that a considerable part of Vavilovs
seeds became degraded and unusable, Russian writer Genady Golubev wrote in 1979 that 80 per cent
of all the Soviet Unions cultivated areas are sown with varieties derived from Vavilovs collection.
Rafael J. Routson of the Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona,
Tucson, says, Vavilov took precise notes that can still be used to assess the climate and crop
correlations, pressure readings for elevation, and he described geographic patterns in crop diversity.
Vavilov travelled to 64 countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Taiwan, Korea, Spain, Algeria, Palestine,
Eritrea, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Mexico and the US, to collect seeds of crop varieties and their
wild ancestors. Based on his notes, modern biologists following in Vavilovs footsteps are able to
document changes in the cultural and physical landscapes and the crop patterns of these places.
According to Russian geneticist Ilya Zacharov, Vavilov was a person of inexhaustible energy and
unbelievable efficiency. In a 2005 article in the Journal of Bioscience, he wrote: During his relatively
short life, he accomplished a surprising amount: in his expeditions he travelled all over the world, he
formulated very important postulates in genetics, he wrote more than ten books, and carried out the
gigantic task of organizing a system of agricultural institutions in the USSR.
Nabhan talked to a farmer in Ethiopia who said Vavilov had an uncanny ability...to pinpoint areas of
high diversity. An elderly agronomist in Kazakhstan, who as a boy had guided Vavilov into forests of
wild apples, remembered that he figured out everything...from little more than a day in the field.
Indeed Vavilov moved at breakneck speed, often commenting, time is short, and there is so much to
do. One must hurry.
Little did he know he was hurrying to an unmarked grave in one of Stalins gulags.
I've had the blessing of visiting the seed bank in St. Petersburg. We looked at a wall of photos of the
people who died protecting those seeds. I've never been so deeply moved by the courage of scientists in
my life. That they put humankind before their own personal lives seemed to me an astonishing act.

===========

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Our-Food-Comes-From/dp/1610910036/?tag=tsplent-20
Gary Paul Nabhan weaves together an extraordinary story in his book Where Our Food Comes From:
Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine.
The future of our food depends on tiny seeds in orchards and fields the world over. In 1943, one of the
first to recognize this fact, the great botanist Nikolay Vavilov, lay dying of starvation in a Soviet prison.
But in the years before Stalin jailed him as a scapegoat for the countrys famines, Vavilov had traveled
over five continents, collecting hundreds of thousands of seeds in an effort to outline the ancient
centers of agricultural diversity and guard against widespread hunger. Now, another remarkable
scientistand vivid storytellerhas retraced his footsteps.
, the Siege of Leningrad began and Nazi forces cut off all imports to the city, stationing military
battalions around its exits. Untended by their leaderand unaware of where he wasthe workers at the
Institute of Plant Industry came under fire from all directions. Begging citizens of St. Petersburg
attempted to break into the building to steal seed. Nazis surged through the city. Barricaded in, unable
to get food in or out of the Institute, and refusing to eat the seeds that Vavilov had worked so tirelessly
to collectmany of the scientists starved to death. Vavilov himself starved in 1943, still imprisoned at
Saratov.

http://ceseedproduction.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/the-story-of-nikolai-vavilov/
http://www.splendidtable.org/story/how-nikolay-vavilov-the-seed-collector-who-tried-to-end-famine-
died-of-starvation
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/geoff-hall-reading-nikolay-vavilov
http://www.amazon.com/Where-Our-Food-Comes-From/dp/1610910036/?tag=tsplent-20



Vavilov postulated the existence of eight world centres of origin of cultivated plants, often associated
with mountainous areas and their tribal peoples. These centres of origin later became Vavilovian
Centres of Diversity.

In Crops and Man agronomist Jack Harlan writes Vavilov predicted that by analysing geographic
patterns of variation and mapping regions where genetic diversity was concentrated, the origin of a
domesticated plant could be found. It was his plan to collect and assemble all of the useful germplasm
of all crops that had potential in the Soviet Union, to study and classify the material, and to utilise it in a
national plant breeding effort.
Vavilov launched a worldwide plant exploration program and organized and often led on horseback
115 expeditions to 64 countries (including
Vavilovs plant exploration programme concentrated on areas in which agriculture has been practiced
for a very long time and in which indigenous civilisations arose. He collected seeds of crop varieties and
their wild ancestors from places such as Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Eritrea, Peru, Brazil, Mexico and the
US.