Dau.I-the-Book was recently working in Coolock Branch Library, settled in the shadow of the Nort'side Shopping Centre, Dublin 17. I wrote a tuthree book-reviews for their newsletter. Dau.I WAS SINCE promoted [woot!] and moved to other libradventures. But a former colleague messaged "your Dad's a scientist, maybe he's like this science book whc I noticed on the return-to-shelf trolley". Which is an engagingly naive view of the eclectic reading habits of yer average scientist. Most of us are woefully hyper-focused: knowing more & more about less & less.
That's how I got to read The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in a City under Siege by Simon Parkin. Lots to reflect on here. The key theme is the question "what / who shall be saved" . . . when armageddon arrives. As The End of Times are round the corner, these are not merely metaphorical meanderings. Parkin is at pains to use Latin binomers for the species which form part of the extensive but still meagre diet of Leningraders who survived the first dreadful Winter of the siege. Sorrel Rumex acetosella [✓], coltsfoot Tussilago farfara [χ] - it's the carcinogenic pyrrolozidine alkaloids innit?
When I was a schoolboy one standard history text was AJP Taylor's The Origin of the Second World War [1961]. It's been a while but I don't remember a chapter on Sleepwalking but that's a big part of how The Allies finished up in WWII. On 23 Aug 1939, one week before Germany invaded Poland, (and my mother sheltered [briefly] under the kitchen table) Foreign Ministers Molotov RU and von Ribbentrop DE signed a non-aggression pact. Over the next two years, the Soviets sold 1.6 million tonnes of grain to the Reich and continued to do so right up until the launch of Unternehmen Barbarossa on 22 June 1941. Stalin was a delusional ideologue: he wanted the world to mirror the ideals of Marxist-Leninism and really didn't like being told that he was wrong. Accordingly, bat-shit five year plans for Soviet agriculture resulted in famine and failure and those responsible were taken out and shot for not trying hard enough. From being students in the 1970s we were always aware of Nikolai Vavilov [stamp R] as a Good Geneticist, pally and parity with the Best of the West in the 20s and 30s. He was undone as a Morgan-Mendelist [=Darwinian whose understanding of the world was informed by him being a 19thCC capitalist], condemned as traitor and spy and replaced by Trofim Lysenko during WWII. Lysenko's theories of plant breeding and agronomy were pure Soviet and pure nonsense but very agreeable to Stalin and the Supreme Soviet. Adopting Lysenkoism possibly killed as many people as the Wehrmacht.
Apart from practicing the standard model of genetics, Vavilov was a pioneer in capturing diversity and studying the origin and biogeography of crop plants. He, his students and collaborators travelled widely through the 20s and 30s seeking out the oldest available peasant and taking samples, seeds and cuttings of obscure varieties of vital agricultural species: potatoes, wheat, rye, barley, pulses, apples everything. |This precious seed-bank of diversity (and potential resistance to plague and scourge) was brought back to Leningrad and propagated in the Institute's field plots. Vavilov was arrested on a field trip to Ukraine in July 1941 and disappeared into the gulags.
By August 1941, Operation Barbarossa had swept through the Baltic SSRs, surrounded Leningrad and the siege began. In Parkin's book, Vavilov is like the ghost of Hamlet's father: always off stage but always present. He inspired fierce and enduring loyalty from those who worked for the Institute: scientists, but also the secretariat, managers, gardeners, lab.techs, drivers, students and field-workers. Parkin interleaves chapters about Vavilov's prison journey with the main theme of desperate hardship in Leningrad.
The hook that makes the story is that a few dozen people living existing on starvation rations in sub zero [in °F!] temperatures did not eat into several tonnes of irreplaceable heritage seeds which they were hoarding against the dragons without. Those dragons included the German invaders, but also Commissars who didn't care two buttons about scab-resistant wheat, and rodents, and desperate citizens who had loved ones to care for. Now here's the thing, several of the Institute's staff did indeed die of starvation [and from shrapnel etc.] but having a purpose, being part of The Project, gave the emaciated survivors a reason to live. The sunk costs from their time and trouble in saving the seeds incentivized them to save for the future.
The potatoes were a special case because frost would destroy the seed-tubers and so they had a sell-by date much much shorter than, say tomato seed - which can be good for 20 years. In the Spring of 1942, the citizens of Leningrad were given a commissariat reprieve. The delusions in Moscow and wilful [la la la can't see you] failure to anticipate - or respond appropriately to - Barbarossa had left Leningrad with absurdly depleted reserves when the jaws of the pincer clamped shut in August '41. As soon as the snow melted, there was a concerted effort to plant every available hectare with cabbage and spuds. And educate the people about which weeds were good to eat. The only place left to propagate mere heritage spuds was some fields about a mile from the front lines in full view of German snipers and artillery. The tractors had long ago be shot up and the horses eaten, so the Potato People had to turn sod with shovels and sticks in the dark. And carefully record the location and provenance of each little plot: on the ground and in the ledger. Always anticipating that they could, any of them, die on the instant leaving someone from the future to read their hand-writing. I am sure I don't have it in me to match their courage, determination and fixity of purpose. Hats Off! And hats off to Simon Parkin for digging up the story. brushing off the dirt to reveal a Truth for Our Times.
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