The Leningrad Seed Archive

[Zoya]

A very poignant story from the siege of Leningrad:

Nikolai Vavilov's Seeds and the Siege of Leningrad

"The Vavilov Institute's seed collecting activity began in 1894, when its scientists brought back the oldest, most resistant varieties from all over the world. One major trauma in the history of St Petersburg/Leningrad was the German siege from September 1941 to January 1944, when the city remained without food for 900 days. It is invariably the first thing to cross the lips of its citizens, whatever they do and whoever they are. Thousands of people died of hunger and the only place in the city where there was something to eat was the Vavilov Institute. But the researchers religiously guarded the cultivated plant collection and the seeds: no one ate them. When rats tried, they ended up as food for the researchers. The determination not to harm the institute’s treasures was such that nine people died of hunger there. At home and elsewhere, the families of researchers also died. In those months researchers found the strength to withstand the siege without profaning the collection. In 1940, Vavilov, who was then the director of the institute, was arrested by the KGB and died in a concentration camp in 1943".

"Tending the earth's edible future reached its most poignant moment--certainly its most courageous--during the Nazis' World War II siege of Leningrad. The site of the world's largest seed bank--at which Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov and his army of ethno-botanists had stockpiled an astonishing 200,000 species--Leningrad endured 900 days of attack during which over half a million people starved to death. Surrounded by harvested seed crops, the collectors martyred themselves rather than consume the botanical future. And when liberators finally entered the besieged facility, they found the emaciated bodies of the botanists lying next to full, untouched sacks of potatoes, corn and wheat--a priceless genetic legacy for which they paid with their lives." Christina Waters, Sep. 5-11, 1996, "Seeding the Future" in Metro Santa Cruz.

From here: Community Based Food & Farming