chlorophylliac | 011 || Video

Entry tags:

ivy was actually a scientist once

011 || Video

[It's been a long while since Ivy last surfaced on the Barge network. She's sitting on deck, one wall of the greenhouse at her back; her mood's taken a swing for the contemplative. Or rather, a swing for the 'let's talk about plants so I don't threaten you all with the ludicrously OP superpowers I totally have now, thanks T'Pol'.]

Nikolai Vavilov.

No, I don't anticipate anyone knowing the name. He was a Soviet botanist and geneticist, most famously credited with Vavilov Centers - the eight geographical regions he identified as the origin points for the human domestication of crop plants. He was also an academic colleague of William Bateson, who I hope at least some of you know was first on Earth to use 'genetics' to refer to the study of heredity.

His ideas didn't go down well with Stalin. Naturally, his ideology had no time for the notion that a living thing could be innately superior to its siblings - genetics was the science of fascism, at the time. He was alternately marginalised and blamed for massive food shortages, not least by a former protégé who invented a more palatable theory.

[She pauses for thought.]

Vavilov died in prison. Of malnutrition, ironically. But that's not my point.

His other legacy to the world was one of the planet's first seedbanks. He had collected almost half a million seeds and roots from across the globe in the hope of making that diversity easily available to his successors, and perhaps to protect those species from the predations of an increasingly hostile, polluted world.

[Her tone's darkened and a moment she looks like she's about to derail into something angrier and less educational, but her brow smooths out and she goes on.]

The Soviets didn't recognize its significance, of course. Even as they were emptying out their museums, they had no idea that Hitler was more interested in the real treasure hidden in Leningrad. When the city was besieged, they didn't even try to protect it. Twelve scientists - unsupported by their government, followers of a man already dying in prison - these men took it on themselves to guard the bank for over two years.

Surrounded by tens of thousands of seeds they knew to be nutritious, nine of them voluntarily starved to death.

[She sounds about as impressed by this as Ivy will ever be by the self-sacrifice of a male human, i.e. 'not actively disgusted'. The vines around her wrists shift and writhe as if they're fidgeting.]

It isn't widely known. One small anecdote in a greater story - but what if things had been different, I wonder. If they hadn't died, but killed, in defence of the riches of the Earth. Not martyrs, but guardians. Would history have marked them as villains, or elevated them as heroes?

[She gives the camera a look which suggests she already has some strong ideas about the answer, and then her communicator switches off.]

[Private to Erik; Text]

My abilities have been restored.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What happened to those seeds? [She knows none of the names here, not even Hitler. Except that apparently people don't like him. So she's going for what she does understand.]

They, at least, survived the siege. The bank has since become the Institute Of Plant Industry and survives as the world's largest collection of seeds, at least to my time.

Why was Valivov blamed for the food shortages?

Edited 2012-09-05 21:23 (UTC)

Their people were starving; there was a dire need for scapegoats, at the time. Pinning the blame for poor crops on a man with a politically unfashionable theory was an elegant means of both shifting blame and discrediting him.