Nikolai Vavilov vs. Hunger
Or how a brilliant scientist’s dream to end world hunger did not fit into Socialist utopia. (Part 2/2)
Nikolai Vavilov was a man on a mission: to end hunger. A Russian plant geneticist, he was famous for establishing the world’s largest seedbank — a repository of seeds and plants that would help him conduct cross-species genetic experiments to yield new biological species that would help fight the war on famine, hunger, and starvation.
Nikolai’s master plan for improving Soviet crops was designed to work over decades, not a few years. There was no way he could meet Joseph Stalin’s impossible demands for immediate results.
Nikolai tried in vain to explain that his work would only secure Russia’s food problems in the long run. Instead, Stalin gave him a three year deadline to create super strains.
The Stalinist regime was to rob Mother Russia of one of her brightest sons.
By this time, Trofim Lysenko, a young Ukrainian agronomist was making his presence felt. Molded in the classic Bolshevik ideal of a proletariat hero, Lysenko appealed to the Socialist ideals feverishly.
Lysenko was an employee in Azerbaijan at one of the hundreds of stations established by Nikolai.
He had his own theory on alleviating the food problems: converting winter wheat into spring wheat. But, more dangerously, he harbored political ambitions.
Lysenko developed a new procedure, vernalization. It’s apparent success gave him just the right opportunities to rise in the scientific and political ranks. Initially interested in Lysenko’s procedure, Nikolai encouraged and helped him gain scientific legitimacy.
Lysenko’s procedure was not original, and neither was it actual science. He was a proponent of ideas of Ivan Michurin, one of the founding fathers of scientific agricultural selection. Lysenko’s popularity rise because he was quick in responding to problems, albeit with little success.
Stalin received word of Lysenko’s work. He was put in charge of agricultural affairs of Soviet Russia. Lysenko, in turn, influenced Stalin with his cunning demagogues and rejection of Nikolai’s life’s work. He fudged data to enter Stalin’s good books. Fraudulent claims and speculative theories were accepted blindly. Emboldened by the faith that Stalin put in him, Lysenko and followers started to undermine and discredit Nikolai’s theories.
Nikolai and his science faced scathing attacks. His expeditions were followed closely. On March 11, 1930, the Russian secret police prepared a dossier on Nikolai Vavilov. Spies kept a watch on his every movement. Proof was now being gathered of sedition and betrayal to Soviet Russia.
Soon, his exit out of Russia was disallowed. Nikolai Vavilov became a prisoner in his own country.
By 1936, Lysenko-ism had grown to monstrous proportions. Scientists were forced to testify falsely against Nikolai. Many of his former associated turned on him fearing for their lives.
The Conference on Genetics and Agriculture met in Moscow in 1936 to discredit Nikolai and genetics. He was branded an ‘underachiever’.
In 1939, Nikolai Vavilov squared off directly against Lysenko at the same conference. He criticized Lysenko’s views openly. Unsuccessfully, he tried launching a strong defense of Mendelian genetics against raucous heckling and interruptions.
Nikolai Vavilov trained to be a scientist, he was grossly unskilled in politics. He failed to see that there was nothing ‘scientific’ about the conference.
“We shall go the pyre…but we shall not retreat from our convictions…to retreat from it simply because some occupying high posts desire it is impossible.”
— Nikolai Vavilov, 1939
Lysenko had won, and Nikolai was soon to be destroyed. On August 6, 1940, Nikolai Vavilov was on one of his expeditions in the Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine, doing what he did best — collecting plants and seeds. Four of Stalin’s secret police of the NKVD followed and arrested him on charges of treason, collaborating with Nazis, and boycotting Soviet science. Nikolai Vavilov refused all charges.
Back in Moscow, he was repeatedly tortured and interrogated. His associates were rounded up and executed for treason.
On July 9, 1941, a military court tried the case of Nikolai Vavilov, the traitor of Mother Russia. The jury sentenced him to death based on the ‘confessions’ recorded during interrogations. Again, Nikolai Vavilov denied all charges.
A once dapper scientist, he was now a political criminal clad in a canvas sack with holes for arms and head, and tree-bark slippers. Nikolai starved in the prison; his only diet was soup of rotten tomatoes or cabbage.
On January 26, 1943, aged fifty-five, Nikolai Vavilov died in his cell.
Pulmonary edema, dystrophia, and chronic malnutrition were listed as cause of death. He was buried in a common prison grave. Tragically, the man who devoted his life to fighting hunger and famine, died of want of food.
A great scientist was made a political scapegoat. Lysenko distorted science, lay waste to rational thinking, and destroyed radical thinking. Nikolai Vavilov was reduced to being yet another casualty of hunger.
The fight against hunger still wages.
Notes
The seedbank that Nikolai setup continues to be a center for scientific progress.
During the World War II, the Nazis proved to be a real threat to the seedbank’s enormous reserves of crops, fruits, and seeds during the Siege of Leningrad.
Nine people in charge of the seeds, boxed the seeds and moved them to the basement. They took shifts in protecting this genetically rich treasure.
A Nazi commando unit was ordered to seize the seedbank, however, Nikolai Vavilov’s work remained secure. The Siege of Leningrad lasted nearly 900 days, and despite suffering from hunger, the seed caretakers refused use the grains stored therein. They sought instead, to protect their country’s future. By the end of the siege, in the spring of 1944, nine of the seed-keepers had died of starvation.
Since then, over 400 strains have been successfully developed from the collection, and several hybrids produced. It is estimated that by 1979, a four-fifth of cultivated land has its origin in Nikolai Vavilov’s collection.
Originally published in Vol. 01, January-February 2014, Meet the City, a bimonthly luxury & lifestyle magazine published by Panchshil.
