How a band of Russian botanists defended their plants from Hitler

One group of scientists risked everything to preserve their seed bank, as Simon Parkin writes in The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad

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How much would you risk for a potato tuber? Would you face down exile and imprisonment? How about torture – even death? Unless you’re an especially avid devotee of Gardeners’ World, it’s unlikely that you’ve ever considered these questions. The staff and scholars of the Plant Institute in Leningrad often did, but then again, they were far more robust than your typical academics. Founded in 1921, the Institute came into its own under the charismatic leadership of Nikolái Vavílov, who took over its running shortly after it was established. A figure from an earlier, more heroic age, he led more than 100 expeditions to 64 different countries over his lifetime in pursuit of rare specimens for the Institute’s collection. 
Under Vavílov’s command, the Institute had a simple, ambitious goal: it would eliminate hunger for the Russian populace. Starvation was the wolf which periodically stalked Russian society, most notoriously during the Russian Civil War (1917-1922) when some parents butchered their own children to stave off death. Despite its sheer landmass, Russia reaped the worst harvests in Europe, partly because of the poor quality of its seed grain.Vavílov, then, conceived of his Institute as a failsafe, a vast reservoir of species from across the globe – the world’s first seed bank. 
The Nazis, though, had other plans. In June 1941, Hitler turned on his erstwhile allies in the Soviet Union and launched a lightning invasion. Operation Barbarossa initially made tremendous progress, with German troops surrounding Leningrad – now known as Saint Petersburg – by the winter of 1941. This is where Simon Parkin, a British contributing writer for The New Yorker, begins The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad. His previous book, The Island of Extraordinary Captives (2022), was a superb account of the inhabitants of a Second World War internment camp. Here he tries a similar approach, framing the siege of Leningrad through the lives, and deaths, of the Plant Institute’s staff, many of whom stayed behind in the city to care for its collection as Hitler’s siege rolled in.
It’s a compelling account. I’ve read histories of the siege before, but few with such disarming immediacy. The bald facts are grim enough: during the brutal winter of 1941 – when temperatures dropped to minus 40 degrees, freezing skin on contact with the air – nearly one in three civilians died. Starvation crazed hierarchies: “Zoologists were well positioned to survive the siege,” Parkin writes, “because they knew how to catch rats and pigeons. Bookish academics were more likely to perish.” He’s particularly sharp on the siege’s psychological toll for citizens: as one recorded, “We are living the life of primitive savages on a desert island.” One woman recalled how she came to hate the moon: clear skies meant sightlines for German planes. For decades afterwards, she suffered insomnia during the full moon, kept awake by the thudding memory of long-fallen bombs. 
Through it all, the Institute’s staff continued their work. For many, the routine of caring for its seeds and samples provided vital structure, even as the workers weakened day by day. One employee took to sleeping in the basement with his potato seedlings to protect them from both looters and vermin. Yet as the staff began to die of starvation, one question grew more pressing: should they eat their charges? A collective decision was made: the Institute’s hoard would remain untouched so that its vital cargo could continue to inform future breakthroughs. As Parkin writes, “Colleagues died while their place of work housed a bounty of seeds which could have saved them.” 
Was this the right choice? Parkin doesn’t commit himself to an answer. Instead, he chooses to spotlight examples of bravery – and evil. He reserves just as much anger for the cruelty of the Soviet authorities as he does for the Nazis. Terrified of revealing how poorly they were caring for their citizens, the deaths of those killed by hunger were marked as “dystrophy”. 
But the clearest window onto Soviet bureaucratic cruelty comes from the fate of Vavílov, the Institute’s director. At the book’s beginning in 1940, he has disappeared, apparently during a plant-hunting expedition to Ukraine. Eventually it transpires that he’s been snatched by Soviet security services, quickly cast into a nightmare mirror-world ruled by an absurdist logic. The fastest way, here, to save yourself from death was to confess to crimes dreamt up by the state – crimes which were punishable by death. Parkin’s writing is fierce in these sections. But, in truth, I wasn’t convinced by the pseudo-detective hunt tracing Vavílov’s whereabouts; in Stalin’s regime, this humane, cosmopolitan and – most fatally – outspoken academic was a marked man from the start. And his conclusion was preordained from the moment he was taken. He died in prison in 1943. His death certificate read “dystrophy”. 
The Forbidden Garden has a galloping pace. But some might feel Parkin places himself uncomfortably close to his historic characters. He not only tells us what the Institute’s staff looked like and how they acted, but also speculates on what they felt and thought. Such techniques are, of course, part and parcel of the biographer’s art. But here, they feel disquietingly intimate, especially when Parkin reveals in a coda that he doesn’t speak Russian. Nor, because of the full invasion of Ukraine, was he able to travel to Saint Petersburg himself to examine the Institute’s archives. 
In total, 33 of the Institute’s staff died during the war. Few left more than blurred photographs and scanty records of their lives. In this context, The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad, despite its constraints, is a remarkable work of literary exhumation. The first full account of the Plant Institute in any language, it’s a fitting testimony to an extraordinary project and the bravery of the ordinary individuals who kept it going – the men and women who were prepared to sacrifice all for the sake of a spud. 
The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad is published by Sceptre at £25. To order your copy, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books