The untold true story of Russian botanists at the world’s first seed bank in besieged Leningrad during WW2 who faced a terrible choice.
In the summer of 1941, German troops surrounded the Russian city of Leningrad and thus began the longest siege in recorded human history. As a result of this blockade, at least three-quarters of a million people living in Leningrad perished – five times more than those who died from the Atomic Bombs. Most of them died from starvation.
This story begins with Soviet agronomist Nikolai Vavilov. Ambitious and internationally respected, he arrived in Petrograd in 1921 (soon renamed Leningrad, and now, Saint Petersberg), with a hand picked team of 20 knowledgeable experts to help. Their mission? To set up a seed bank to protect their fellow countrymen from famine. To accomplish that goal, Professor Vavilov and collaborators collected seeds from thousands of wild varieties of crop plants from around the world and preserved them in the hope that these seeds might contain beneficial genetic traits and types of resistance.
As the decline and loss of natural habitats accelerated worldwide where these crop plants grew, Vavilov and collaborators felt a growing urgency to collect and conserve as many seeds of these threatened plant species as they could before they, and their genetic material, were lost forever. By 1933, Vavilov and collaborators had collected 148,000 types of seeds and tubers. By 1940, they had visited 64 countries and collected seed samples from literally thousands of wild and domesticated varieties of food crops.
Even today, this seed bank is critically important, as the award-winning author and journalist Simon Parkin, writes in The Forbidden Garden Of Leningrad (2024; Scribner Books/Simon & Schuster / Bookshop.org):
Ninety percent of the seeds and planted crops held in the St Petersburg collection are found in no other scientific collections in the world. More than a thousand crossbred varieties of these plants bear the name of their discoverer, ‘Vavilov’. In the kitchens and dining rooms around the world, people continue to benefit from the sacrifice of the men and women who gave their lives during the siege. (p. 272)
But World War 2 erupted and the invading German forces soon surrounded Leningrad. Hitler had ordered his troops not to attack Moscow without first capturing Leningrad. Hitler’s plan was to use Russia to replenish his military resources for his European war and to provide food for German citizens. Later, Hitler changed his plans in the face of the severe Russian winter (one of the harshest in decades) and ordered his army to starve people of Leningrad to death.
The horrific conditions that prevailed during the siege of Leningrad are described in great detail. Although gruesome, this context gives the reader an appreciation of the extraordinary sacrifices involved in the collective decision of the seed bank staff to protect their precious seeds instead of eating them – not even to save their own lives.
Based on letters and diary entries of those who suffered and died, this historical nonfiction narrative is provides a powerful peek into the private thoughts some of Leningrad’s residents regarding their ordeals, and the author’s writing is simply exquisite. For example, in this passage, he contemplates what it means to truly be hungry:
I have not known hunger. Like everyone, I have been introduced: on a school trip when I ate my packed lunch soon after the coach departed, leaving only crumbs to see me through to dusk. Or on a long night drive when every fast food stop had closed a few hours earlier and chewing gum could only stretch so far. Or at the cinema when I arrived too late for popcorn. Hunger, but glancingly. Not close enough to shake its bony hand, then feel those fingers begin to rub the flesh away.
I know, vaguely, that hunger squats, ever patient, in the empty space on supermarket shelves, behind the tins of soup and boxes of cereals. I know it waits for the systems to snap, the logistics to fail, when it finally emerges to move in intimately, and given time, fatally.
How long might you or I survive if hunger arrived today? (p. 292.)
Beautifully – at times, hauntingly – written and meticulously researched, I cannot recommend this eloquent book highly enough to you. The devotion of the scientists to their banked seeds was both touching and astonishing, particularly when confronted by one of the coldest and harshest winters in decades, a war with Germany they could not win and their persecution by Stalin and his sadistic government ghouls. This incredible story of human resilience and their dedication to saving seeds at all costs will make you deeply grateful for every mouthful of food you eat for many days or weeks after you’ve finished reading it.
The Forbidden Garden Of Leningrad was shortlisted for the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize, was a finalist for the 2025 Orwell Prizes for Political Writing, and was named a 2024 Best Book of the Year by Scientific American and The Economist.
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