One of the Soviet Union’s finest achievements has gone largely unrecognised. Back in the 1920s, the world’s first seedbank was established in a former palace in Leningrad (the city later renamed St Petersburg). This living plant library provided the raw material for agriculturalists to breed higher yielding crops, and, in turn, help ease food shortages.
Botany is not normally considered the stuff of drama but Simon Parkin’s account of the seedbank in The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad is extraordinary. He tells us that the seedbank’s founder, Nikolai Vavilov, was an intrepid botanist and explorer with a boundless ambition. Vavilov declared that the seedbank would be “a treasury of all known crops and plants”; he led expeditions in search of rare flora ranging from the deserts of Iran to the Amazon basin. By the outbreak of the Second World War, the seedbank contained 250,000 plant species.
Then it ran into serious trouble. It was caught up in one of modern history’s most terrible episodes – the great blockade of Leningrad: the longest siege ever recorded, lasting almost 900 days between 1941 and 1944. Starvation was weaponised. A directive from Nazi high command stated: “we are not interested in preserving even a part of this city’s population.” At least 750,000 people died during the siege, most from hunger. This was, Parkin underlines, around “four times the number that died in the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined”.
The staff in the seedbank faced death alongside the city’s other residents – but with one crucial difference. They knew that much of their collection was edible: if they wished to, they could eat the seeds and survive. It was an appalling ethical choice. They were, as Parkin writes, “faced with this ultimate and fundamental dilemma: to save a collection built to eradicate collective famine, or to use the collection to save themselves”.
In a further shocking development, Vavilov had fallen foul of Stalin’s purges. Every area of intellectual life had become dangerous and botany was no exception. “We shall go to the pyre,” Vavilov said, refusing to abandon his science. “We shall burn. But we shall not retreat from our convictions.” He was now languishing in prison.
Parkin is the author of two previous books about the Second World War. The most recent was The Island of Extraordinary Captives, his award-winning account of the internment of enemy aliens on the Isle of Man. But his latest is by far the most dramatic. Striking narrative gold, he sets out this remarkable story in admirable detail, drawing upon fresh research sources. If the seedbank, siege and Stalin’s purges aren’t enough to be going on with, there is an additional, astonishing twist: Nazi SS botanists wanted to acquire the seeds for themselves and launched a secret military mission to seize them.
The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad is as gripping as it is absorbing throughout. This is not least because the seedbank was such a crucial vital invention. As Parkin says: “The idea of a seedbank was novel, and the long-term value of a repository of genetic plants yet to be fully understood”.
We now know that seedbanks are priceless. Vavilov’s innovation led to the establishment of today’s high-tech seedbanks around the world, which shield plant species against catastrophe wrought by war, famine or environmental collapse. The story of the Leningrad seedbank deserves wider airing, not simply due to its extreme drama but also because it was the pioneer that started the trend to protect the earth’s plants from destruction – and therefore, also, to safeguard the human race.
Published by Sceptre, £25
Peter Carty is the author of the novel ‘Art’ (Pegasus £10.99)
This post was originally published on here
