Russian Gene Bank Faces Eviction

Scientists here at one of the world’s largest gene banks starved to death during the 900-day siege of Leningrad, as this city was then known, rather than consume their collection’s priceless seeds.

At the time, Nikolai Vavilov, the institute’s highly respected leader and most significant collector, had already been arrested after running afoul of a quack geneticist who caught the ear of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Vavilov, whose name the institute now bears, died in prison in 1943.

The government-sponsored N. I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry survived these and other blows, including sharp funding cuts in the early 1990s. But now it is battling a new threat that it claims could hurt its collection more than anything that came before: a central government decree ordering it to hand over its two grand but rundown main buildings, located on one of this city’s most picturesque squares, for other uses by the federal government.

A move would inevitably result in the destruction of a significant portion of the institute’s 330,000 genetically different samples, says Viktor Dragavtsev, its director, who is fighting in court to block the eviction order. Many of the varieties are traditional food plants or their wild cousins from remote places around the world, where it is now virtually impossible to find or gather new samples.

The collection, gradually built up since 1894, is maintained by the periodic resowing of crops in special fields and greenhouses across Russia. It includes several billion seeds -- most in small packets labeled only with codes, many of them frozen.

Even if an appropriate new facility was available, the labor-intensive process of moving the frozen part of the collection while trying to keep seeds from defrosting would take five to six years, Dragavtsev contends. Many seeds would be destroyed, and the institute would lose track of the identity of others, he says.

“When these packages are moved, they will absolutely for sure be dropped and spilled,” he said. “And on a package, there’s only a code. It can’t be ruled out that codes will be confused.”

Collections like the Vavilov’s are a key repository of the genetic diversity required for the development of new crops with greater resistance to diseases or pests, higher nutritional value, or other desired improvements.

“Every day, 250,000 babies are born on the planet,” Dragavtsev said. “By 2015, the population on Earth will be 8.5 billion people.... Gene banks are the main guarantee of food security in the world.”

The latest threat to the gene bank emerged in December, when Russian Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov signed a decree ordering the occupants of four buildings on St. Isaac’s Square to relocate “in order to effectively accommodate federal administrative offices in St. Petersburg and provide effective state control over the use of unique historical monuments.”

No provisions were made for a new home for the Vavilov institute.

Dragavtsev argues that local officials who hope to make money from the buildings’ conversion were behind the decree.

“I’m not convinced that Kasyanov actually knew that the plant-growing institute was located in this building when he was signing that document,” he said.

In fighting back, Dragavtsev doesn’t hesitate to cite the institute’s mix of misfortune and great contributions to science. He easily rattles off six occasions when the institute faced serious blows, starting with the 1930s’ rise of Trofim Lysenko to a position of dominance in Soviet agricultural science.

Lysenko’s ideas about plant genetics were always scorned by mainstream scientists, but he won Stalin’s support with his ideological language and promises of quick results in developing improved crops -- ideas that were enforced through political repression and had a devastating effect on Soviet agricultural productivity.

Vavilov became the leader of scientists who dared stand up to him.

“Lysenko branded Vavilov as the enemy of socialist agricultural principles,” Dragavtsev said. Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died three years later while still a prisoner. Of about 80 of his colleagues who were also arrested, half were executed by firing squad or died in prison, Dragavtsev says.

Meanwhile, invading Nazi forces laid siege to Leningrad.

“The staff of the institute was evacuated to the Urals.... Fifty staffers stayed behind at the plant industry institute,” Dragavtsev said. “So they had packs of seeds right in front of them on their desks. But they didn’t take a single seed, and 14 of them starved to death. But they managed to preserve the collection at the expense of their lives. It’s a very tragic story.”

Dmitri V. Pavlov, a Soviet food-supply official in Leningrad during the siege, wrote about the institute scientists in a 1965 book, “Leningrad 1941: The Blockade.”

“Hardly able to move their feet, they came to the institute every day to work,” he wrote. “The fate of the collection depended on their self-control. The proximity to grain and the duty of caring for it in the name of the future while slowly dying of starvation was inhuman torture. But by their solidarity and single-mindedness, the Vavilov collection, which took years to put together, was preserved for science and the future.”

Pavlov calculates that 31 institute employees died directly or indirectly of hunger.

Three years after the war, ideologically driven disaster struck again.

“The Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences had a session where real genetics was branded as a pseudo-science typical of the bourgeoisie,” Dragavtsev said. “So the best scientists at this institute were fired. A number of them were arrested, and it was a tragedy again. It was only starting with 1957 that the institute began to regain its authority and prestige.”

Then, in the early 1990s, another blow landed as the Soviet Union collapsed and funds for the institute were slashed. The United States and other countries donated money and equipment, such as freezers, to help with the storage of seeds.

“It’s only due to the financial and material assistance rendered by the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Germany and Australia that we’ve managed to survive,” Dragavtsev said.

The next attack, he said, came two years ago, when some St. Petersburg officials decided to take over a graduate student hostel belonging to the institute. In describing that battle, Dragavtsev relates a tale only too typical of the mix of business, politics and criminality across contemporary Russia.

“Tough guys with close-cropped hair came in Mercedeses and used crowbars to dislodge the padlocks and break the doors open, entered the building and took it,” he said. “They put in new locks and actually told me not to come any closer to the building than [80 feet].”

Dragavtsev’s deputy, however, was a retired admiral, and the two decided to fight back.

“So he telephoned and, in a matter of hours, he had two busloads of marines,” Dragavtsev said. “I asked the marines to take all the people who were in the building at that time -- the new ‘owners’ -- and throw them in that puddle in the street. And they were thrown out.

“After that, I hired 15 veterans of the Afghan war. They guarded the buildings for three months.... We won three court hearings at the court of arbitration and managed to defend our right to have that hostel.”

But Dragavtsev believes that this victory carried a bitter price, leading directly to the current crisis.

“These guys who tried to capture the hostel realized it wouldn’t be possible to defeat us just with the hands of thugs,” he said. “The small alligators decided to get the help of a bigger alligator -- Mr. Kasyanov. They think that the big alligator can take away these buildings, so they went to him for help. That’s the scheme. That’s how it worked.... These are the same guys. They’re just putting the money in their own pockets.”

City officials reject such charges.

“This decision is taken at a very high level, and I think that everything will be done in a proper and well-thought-through manner,” Valery Nazarov, chairman of St. Petersburg’s committee for managing state property, told Russia’s TVS television.

Local and federal officials also argue the buildings deserve better care than the current occupants have been able to provide.

But Dragavtsev, who admits that he could never have fought back this way in Soviet times, isn’t convinced.

His appeal is now at Russia’s Higher Court of Arbitration in Moscow, which is expected to rule on it soon.