01x04 - Vavilov

[bunniefuu]

To be human has been
to know the torment of hunger.

There was once a man who
dreamed that through science,

we could make a world where no
one would ever perish from hunger.

And famine would be no more.

He gave us a treasure
to fulfil that promise,

but he faced a terrible
choice at a moment of reckoning.

To lie about science and live,

or to tell the truth
and face certain death.

For the first couple of
hundred thousand years that

we were human, we were
wanderers living beneath the stars.

We gathered plant
life and hunted animals.

Until about ten
or 12,000 years ago,

when our ancestors
invented a new way to live.

Think of those geniuses who
were the first to realize that

inside the plants they foraged,

was a means to
make another plant.

A seed.

That discovery led to the single most
fateful choice our species ever made.

They could continue
to wander in small bands,

or they could settle down
to grow and raise their food.

This required sacrifices for rewards
that would not come until much later.

For the first time, we were
thinking about the future.

Of course, these decisions
weren't made in an instant.

They unfolded over generations.

That seems like a long
time ago in human terms,

but in the great
sweep of cosmic time,

it was less than
a half a minute ago.

This Cosmic Calendar compresses
all of the last 13.8 billion years

since the big bang into a
single calendar Earth year.

Midnight on
December 31 is right now.

Every month is a little
more than a billion years.

Every day, a little
less than 40 million years.

And all of humanity's
proudest achievements unfold

in the last couple
of minutes of cosmic time.

That's how new we
are to the universe.

Our ancestors began to
domesticate animals and

plants less than 30 seconds
ago on the Cosmic Calendar.

For the first time, the
wanderers were settling down.

And building things to last
for more than a single season.

They dared to touch the future.

Their tower of
Jericho still stands.

Was it a watchtower for
protecting the city from invaders?

Or just a way to get
closer to the stars?

It took 11,000
work days to build.

Something that could
only be possible with the

food surpluses that
agriculture provided.

This is the
world's oldest stairway.

It was already 5,000 years old before
the first Egyptian pyramid was built.

To climb it is to follow in the
footsteps of 300 generations.

Isn't it astonishing that people
who had barely ceased wandering,

we're able to create
something of such permanence?

The rich and varied
hunter-gatherer diet,

of plants, insects, birds
and other animals, was replaced.

City dwellers largely subsisted
on a few carbohydrate crops.

And when the rains didn't come
or a fungus afflicted the grain,

there was hunger
on a massive scale.

Famine.

Famines caused by drought and
British colonial mismanagement

in India in the 18th century
k*lled ten million people.

In China, during the
famines of the 19th century,

more than 100 million
people perished.

The great hunger in Ireland,

also a result of
British imperial policy,

starved a million to death and

forced another two million to flee
the country in search of a living.

The Brazilian drought and
pestilence of 1877 was comparable.

In a single province, more
than half died of starvation.

The dead remain uncounted
from the famines that wracked

Ethiopia, Rwanda
and the Sahel in Africa.

For a couple of thousand years,

ever since records were kept,
somewhere on Earth,

people in great
numbers have starved.

Could agriculture become a science with
a predictive theory as reliable as gravity?

One that could consistently produce breeds
able to stand up to drought and disease?

Farmers and herders knew
the advantages of preferentially

selecting the hardiest
specimens for crossbreeding,

to produce a more
successful hybrid.

This was known as
artificial selection.

But the mechanism of how
those traits were passed on to

succeeding generations
remained a complete mystery.

This is Down House.

Charles Darwin's home,
where he lived with his wife

Emma and their ten children.

He was hardly the
authoritarian Victorian patriarch.

But instead a tender,
loving father who delighted

in his children's ridicule.

This is the garden he planted.

This place is a strangely
pastoral setting for the most

influential revolutionary
in the history of thought.

Even now, there are people
who are afraid of his idea.

Charles Darwin discovered
that species, including ours,

evolve over time through a
process of natural selection.

The environment rewards those
best adapted to its changing

realities with survival and with
new generations of offspring.

Darwin demystified the
external reality of life,

but no one had any idea what the
inner mechanisms of evolution were.

At that same moment, an
abbot at a rural monastery

in what is now the Czech Republic
was trying to become a science professor.

Gregor Mendel flunked his
qualifying exam both times.

The only career path open to him
was to become a substitute teacher.

So in his spare time,

he took up the
study of pea plants.

He bred tens of
thousands of them,

carefully scrutinizing
their height and their shape

and the color of their pods,
their seeds and flowers.

Mendel was searching for a
predictive theory of breeding.

So that you could know in
advance exactly what you would

get when you crossed a
tall plant with a short one,

and a green pea
with a yellow one.

Mendel found that you would
get a yellow pea every time.

We didn't have a word for
the power of the yellow over

the green until
Mendel coined it.

He called that
quality "dominant."

And to his delight, he found
that he could predict what would

happen in the next
generation of peas after that.

One in four pea
plants would be green.

Mendel named the hidden trait that
popped up in the next crop, "recessive."

There was something
he called "factors,"

hidden inside the plants that
caused particular characteristics.

And they operated by a law
that Mendel could describe

with a simple
equation, like gravity.

Charles Darwin and
Gregor Mendel didn't know it,

but the two scientists were
deciphering the mysterious

workings of life at
the very same moment.

Darwin presented the evidence
for a oneness with all life.

That despite our pretensions
to a mystical higher birth,

we were actually relatives to
the other beasts and vegetables.

As much a part of the natural
world as any other living thing.

Mendel discovered that
there were laws governing the

way life's
messages were passed on.

The substitute teacher had
invented a whole new field of science.

But nobody noticed for 35 years.

He died never knowing that
the world would come to see him

as a giant in the
history of science.

Mendel's work was
resurrected at the beginning of

the 20th century and he
had no more vigorous defender

than the British
zoologist William Bateson.

It was Bateson who named the
new field of science devoted

to studying these factors.

Genetics.

Bateson and his
colleagues worked on developing

new breeds of
plants and animals.

He believed that science
and freedom were indivisible

and that's how
he ran his laboratory.

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov,

a visiting botanist from Russia,

took Bateson's
credo deeply to heart.

He wanted to use the
new field of genetics to learn

how to feed the world.

He was on his honeymoon
but science was his passion.

Even as a child,
Vavilov had a sense of urgency.

"Too little time, too much to
do," was his lifelong refrain.

How could he have
known what was coming?

The idea that our
planet is a single organism,

a unity, has a ring of hollow
sentimentality for many people.

But it's just a scientific fact.

Something is about to happen
here, in remote Southern Peru,

in the year 1600 on
February 19 at 5:00 PM.

Unsuspecting multitudes
and distant foreign capitals

will never know how this
event reached around the world

to torment and k*ll them.

This nasty mixture of
sulfuric acid and volcanic ash

will block the sun's
rays from reaching Earth.

Some of the sunlight will be
absorbed here in the stratosphere.

The eruption of Huaynaputina
volcano remains to this day

the largest expl*si*n in South
America in recorded history.

Winter is coming.

Volcanic winter.

For the people of Russia,

it brought the worst
winter in six centuries.

For two years, even the
summer temperatures would fall

below freezing at night.

Two million people, a
third of Russia's population,

would die from
the resulting famine.

It led to the downfall of
the Tsar Boris Godunov and

all because of a volcano that
erupted 8,000 miles away in Peru.

This was not the last
famine in Russian history.

Drought and
famines occur frequently.

But it wasn't until
nearly three centuries later,

in 1891, that the magnitude of
suffering was again as ghastly.

Winter came early that
year and the crops failed.

Tsar Alexander III
was slow to respond.

Wealthy Russian merchants
continued to export grain at

a profit even as
millions went hungry.

All the Tsar had to offer his
starving subjects was "famine bread."

A miserable mixture of
moss, weeds, bark and husks.

Half a million
Russians perished,

while the aristocracy and
the wealthy feasted on fresh

strawberries from the south of
France and clotted cream from England.

The Russian Revolution would
not explode for another 30 years,

but many historians
believe that this famine

was the spark that
ignited the long fuse.

It was to make a lasting
impression on the hero of

our story, Nikolai Vavilov.

This is the Vavilov family.

The parents were born into
poverty but had worked their

way up into the
upper middle class.

All four of the children would
grow up to become scientists.

Sergey became a physicist.

Nikolai grew up
to be a botanist.

Don't come near me.

If you touch me, I'll jump.

Even as a boy, Vavilov
was never one to back down.

In 1911, Russia was the
largest grain exporter on Earth,

despite the fact that its
farming methods were antiquated.

The Petrovsky Institute was
the only place in Russia where

scientists could hope to
modernize food production

through the new
science of genetics.

But it was still a
matter of controversy.

Debate topic for today,

is plant selection
a science or not?

It is not a science.

A farmer knows best.

He's been sowing the
larger seeds and crossbreeding

the fattest animals
for thousands of years.

What do we scientists
have to offer them?

Except fancy equations
to confuse the peasants.

They don't want that.
They want bread.

The farmer has wisdom
and is worthy of our respect.

But tragically, he lacks the
predictive powers of science.

They cannot foretell
which traits will dominate

or which will be recessive.

The farmer plays roulette
and he's about as successful

as the average gambler.

Gregor Mendel made it possible
for him to know the odds.

To know what number
the ball will land on.

The moment Mendel expressed
his ideas mathematically,

agriculture became a
science and our only hope

to efficiently feed ourselves.

And feed the world.

In 1914, during
the First World w*r,

Vavilov began to wonder.

Where did the domesticated
plants come from?

Who were their ancestors?

In a love letter he wrote...

I really
believe deeply in science.

It is my life and
the purpose of my life.

I do not hesitate to give my life
even for the smallest bit of science.

The First World w*r
revealed the deep cracks in

Russian society and spurred the
outbreak of revolution and civil w*r.

Vavilov established the
first of his 400 scientific

institutes where
the children of peasants and

laborers became scientists.

All in the service of Vavilov's
dream of ending famine.

In 1920, Vavilov dared to
propose a new law of nature.

Comrades,
the same genes perform the

same functions in
different species of plants.

This is because they
share a common ancestor.

In order to understand
evolution and to guide our

breeding work scientifically,
we must go to the oldest

agricultural countries where these
common ancestors may still live.

Russia shall not
perish as long as there are

people like Nikolai Vavilov!

Vavilov was now world famous.

Me, I'm nothing special.

It's my brother
Sergey, the physicist,

who's the brilliant one.

Vavilov knew that every seedling
contains its species' unique message.

The content's different,

but they were all written
in a mysterious language.

One that would not
be deciphered for decades.

Vavilov wanted to preserve every
phrase of life's ancient scripture,

to ensure its safe
passage to the future.

He was among the first to grasp
the critical importance of biodiversity.

Vavilov came up with
an entirely new concept.

A world seed bank that he
hoped would be impervious

to w*r and natural catastrophe.

And there was a scientific
underpinning to this humanitarian goal.

If you could find the earliest living
specimens of the plants we eat,

you could parse its sentences
and decipher life's language.

You could know how
it changed over time.

This decryption would make it
possible to write new messages.

To grow food immune to disease,

fungus and insects
and resistant to drought.

Vavilov would become a hunter
of plants on five continents,

venturing to places no
scientist dared go before him.

Without maps or roads,
Vavilov was the first European

in modern times to venture into the
mountainous regions of Afghanistan.

Riddled with tribal
clashes and other dangers,

Vavilov was suspicious of
the prevalent hypothesis that

humans invented
agriculture in the river deltas.

He reasoned that remote
mountain strongholds would

be a much safer place to farm.

Far from the casual
plundering of passersby.

As Vavilov risked life and limb,

searching for seeds
on five continents,

his legend as a daredevil equalled
his reputation for scientific genius.

In 1927, in what was then
Abyssinia, now Ethiopia,

Vavilov discovered the
mother of all coffee.

It was a good thing too.

Because he needed to stay
awake all night guarding the camp.

As Vavilov waited for permission
to travel into the interior,

he was surprised to
receive an invitation from

the regent and future
emperor of Ethiopia, Rastafari.

Or as the world would come
to know him, Haile Selassie.

Vavilov later recalled...

It was just the two of us.

He questioned me with
great interest about my country

and its revolution.

I informed him that Lenin,
our founder, had died,

and Joseph Stalin now ruled.

I told Rastafari how Stalin's
armed robbery of a bank had

raised $3 million for the
revolution and made him

a folk hero in
Russia 20 years before.

As Vavilov continued his global
quest for seeds and knowledge,

Trofim Lysenko,
one of Vavilov's numerous

protégé's was beginning
to make a name for himself.

Fresh green
peas in the wintertime?

Sound too good to be true?

Not if barefoot plant expert Trofim
Lysenko has anything to say about it.

No universities or staring at the hairy
legs of flies in laboratories for him.

No lavish trips to foreign lands
in pursuit of ancient asparagus.

He does it the peasant way
in the fields of Mother Russia.

And there'll be green peas on
the table this January thanks to him.

As Joseph Stalin
was having all his political

rivals systematically m*rder*d,

he began to slash away at the
structure of Russian agriculture.

His stated goal was to
modernize Soviet agriculture.

But the result was catastrophic.

Stalin ordered the Kulaks,

as the more prosperous
peasants were known,

to be liquidated as a class.

Between five and ten million
people perished of famine.

But to Trofim Lysenko, this
massive tragedy was an opportunity.

Lysenko hated Vavilov
for his knowledge and fame,

and like the snake that he was;

he knew exactly when to strike.

And ultimately,
his venom would be fatal.

The Garden of Eden
must have been somewhere near

here in central Asia because
this is where the first apples grow.

Vavilov traveled the
world identifying the first

places on Earth
to bear these seeds.

Collecting samples
of each for safekeeping.

All in all, Vavilov brought back a
quarter of a million varieties of seeds.

The Russia Vavilov returned
to was a different country.

One in the grip of the most
vicious famine it had ever known.

The heady optimism of the revolution
had been replaced with dread and despair.

Vavilov's institute
of plant industry,

in the city that was
then called Leningrad,

was now the largest collection
of genetic information on Earth.

His team began to sort and
catalogue every precious seed.

They worked tirelessly,

as if the life of every
hungry Russian depended on them.

Comrade Stalin.

I have something of vital importance
to our nation's security to tell you.

I know why the country starves
and I know how to turn famine

into plenty so that you
may triumph over all those who

seek to undermine you.

Well then, Comrade Lysenko,

you must be a very powerful man.

The scientists are lying to you.

Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel,
Nikolai Vavilov, all liars.

Comrade, why do you think
the giraffe has a long neck?

A giraffe?

Why are you wasting my time?

So it can nibble on leaves
at the top of the trees?

Exactly.

But the scientists say no.

They believe in imaginary,
invisible entities called

genes that somehow get changed
by equally invisible forces

that tell the giraffe
to have a long neck

and a chicken to
have a short one.

I don't believe
in imaginary things.

But Vavilov does and
that's why our people starve.

While he's been off
collecting souvenirs,

I've been devising a way to give
Mother Russia the thing she needs most.

A harvest of wheat
in the dead of winter.

If this is true,
if you really have this power...

I do, Comrade. I do.

But I must have a free hand.

No more interference from
the bourgeois geneticists.

They are agents of our enemies.

They want to starve
Russia into submission.

That's not why
the giraffe's neck is long.

How could Stalin have
fallen for that one?

It was easy.

He desperately
wanted to believe it.

Lysenko was peddling the long
discredited theory of an early

19th century naturalist
named Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

He believed that
acquired characteristics,

let's say the length of a
giraffe's neck from straining

to get at those leaves up high,

could be inherited
by the next generation.

He failed to grasp that
it took millions of years of

evolution and higher survival
rates among the generations of

giraffes with even
slightly longer necks to result

in a tall modern giraffe.

This increasingly long neck
of the giraffe was due to random

mutations in the genes that happened
to lead to a more successful giraffe.

Not their neck
stretching exertions.

This had been Charles Darwin's
revolutionary insight.

Evolution by natural selection.

Lysenko whispered in Stalin's
ear that he could fulfill

a centuries old Russian
dream and end the famine that

threatened Stalin's
grip on the country.

Lysenko would soak the
wheat seeds in ice water

so that they could still
thrive in the ice and snow.

A process he
called vernalization.

Lysenko falsely claimed
that the plants offspring

would inherit the
resistance to cold.

No time-consuming painstaking
crossbreeding required.

Only one thing stood in his way.

Vavilov and his stubborn
adherence to genetics.

The bitter irony was that
while Lysenko was spinning

fantasies of
abundance for Stalin,

Vavilov and his team were
crossing wheat species from

higher altitudes that
actually would've resulted

in heightened food
production in Russia.

As Vavilov rushed
to the Kremlin,

all he could think about was
the work that needed to be done.

He was on a collision
course that would doom him

and countless
others to starvation.

Vavilov knew
that no man could witness

Stalin's fear and
expect to live long.

Nikolai Ivanovich,
I tell you, we are in

the gravest danger.

Three days ago, the secret police
came for Yevgeny and Leonid.

They haven't
been heard from since.

Their wives are frantic.

Lysenko takes every
opportunity to blame you

for the famine.

I tell you, we must stop
the experiments in genetics.

Carry on quietly with your work.

No matter what happens.

We must hurry.

We must be like Michael Faraday,

working hard and keeping
accurate notes of the results.

If I disappear,
then you must take my place.

The only thing that matters
is getting the science right.

It is the only hope
of ending this famine

and all the others to come.

Comrade, they're going
to arrest you and all of us.

Then we better
work that much faster.

Stalin's forced
collectivization of farms

in the Ukraine led to one of the
darkest chapters in human history.

It was a famine so severe
and widespread that instead of

being known by
a year and a place,

it was given a name all its own.

Holodomor, meaning the
extermination by hunger.

Stalin's zeal to push the
kulak peasants off their farms

and into factories had
become a policy of genocide.

Vavilov and his geneticists
continue to speak against you.

I cannot bear it.

Stalin knew that getting
rid of Vavilov might be trouble.

The global scientific
community admired Vavilov for

his ideas and his courage.

They had even been willing
to move their international

genetics congress to Moscow when Stalin
wouldn't let him travel outside the country.

Discredit Vavilov first,

then you can do
with him as you wish.

I regret to
report that the biochemists

are not yet able to distinguish
the lentil from the pea by

analyzing their proteins.

I reckon that anyone
who tries them on their tongue

can tell a lentil from a pea.

Comrade, we are unable
to distinguish them chemically.

What's the point of
being able to distinguish them

chemically if you can
try them on your tongue?

Lysenko now mounted
a relentless campaign against

Vavilov and science.

It came to a head
at a two-day conference.

All the scientists and
enemies of science gathered to

debate the future of
Soviet agricultural policy.

And so we shall soon
see how my method of soaking

seeds of all kinds in ice water
shall lead to a better fed Motherland.

What?
No experiments? No data?

Perhaps you haven't noticed.

Your ranks are thinning.

Vernalization is going to
provide a huge winter harvest.

You are either
with our plan or...

You can take me to the stake.

You can set me on fire.

But you can't make
me lie about science!

We've just witnessed
a man committing suicide.

He's going to be arrested.

Arrested? For what?

You just wait.

That's the last you'll see
of this poor brilliant fool.

But Vavilov was no fool.

In preparation
for what was coming,

he had warned his
colleagues that they must ask

for transfers to other
institutes to save themselves.

His closest colleagues
valiantly refused to distance

themselves from Vavilov.

Comrade Vavilov,
you are needed back in Moscow.

It seems you took some papers
that didn't belong to you.

Just let me use the last of the
light to finish my work, please.

This looks bad, Comrade.
Really bad.

You've been up to
some serious mischief.

You must've known you would
be found out soon or later.

What can you
possibly be talking about?

Yes, yes.

I'm sure you're
completely mystified.

Don't be cute with me.

You know why you are here.

You have been arrested
as an active participant in

a subversive anti-Soviet
organization and a spy for

foreign intelligence services.

Do you admit your guilt?

No. I do not.

I declare categorically
that I have never engaged in

espionage or any other
anti-Soviet activity.

The testimony you cite are
of witnesses whom the state

has already m*rder*d.

You know I am not a spy.

You know I love my country.

My real crime, my only
crime is a profound difference

of scientific opinion.

Vavilov's tormentor
had plenty of experience

softening up such
stubborn subjects.

He started interrogating
Vavilov for ten,

12 hours at a time.

Usually rousing him out of his
bed in the middle of the night.

He must've been tortured,

because his legs
were so swollen,

he was unable to walk.

Vavilov would be dragged
back to his cell and crawl to

a place on the floor and
just lie there, unable to move.

It kept on for 1,700 hours,
more than 400 sessions.

Until Vavilov finally broke.

A year after his arrest,
he was sentenced to be shot.

He was taken to the
place of his execution where

he languished for months.

Just when things
couldn't get any darker,

an even greater
darkness descended.

Hitler had broken his
nonaggression pact with

Stalin, sending millions
of German troops and thousands

of tanks to invade Russia.

But the siege of Leningrad
was, by any metric,

the most ghastly of all.

This was the world's
genetic inheritance.

The seeds of the plants
that had sustained us since

the invention of agriculture.

And Hitler, unlike Stalin,
knew that it was priceless.

We don't
even know if he's alive.

Until we do, we must
find it within ourselves to

do as Nikolai Ivanovich would.

If the siege lasts, our fellow
citizens will get very hungry.

This building contains
several tons of edible material.

We must figure out how
to protect every last seed

for the time when the
world returns to its senses.

In all of history, no team of scientists
has ever been tested so cruelly.

They were pushed beyond the
breaking point and yet they did not break.

On Christmas Day alone in 1941,

4,000 people starved
to death in Leningrad.

The city had been under siege by
Hitler's army for more than 100 days.

The temperature was -40 degrees and the
city's entire infrastructure had collapsed.

It was only a matter of time,
Hitler thought to himself,

before Leningrad
succumbed to his will.

No city could endure
such suffering for very long.

While Stalin fretted
over the safety of the

artworks at the
Hermitage Museum,

he never gave a single
thought to Vavilov's seed bank.

But Hitler had already taken
the Louvre art museum of Paris.

He coveted something
much more precious.

Vavilov's treasure.

Hitler had established a
special tactical unit of the SS,

Russland-Sammelcommando,
the Russian collector commandos,

to take control
of the seed bank and retrieve

its living riches for
future use by the Third Reich.

They waited at the ready,
like a pack of Dobermans,

straining to be
unleashed on the institute.

The botanists were now
down to a ration of two slices

of bread per day.

But still, they
continued their work.

In a way, the German army
was the least of their worries.

If only Vavilov were here.

I feel so lost without him.

Dear comrade,
as painful as it is,

we must accept that
he's gone forever.

But Vavilov
was alive... barely.

He had been moved to another
prison in another city.

I am 54 years old,
with a vast experience and

knowledge in the
field of plant breeding.

I would be happy to
devote myself entirely to

the service of my country.

I request and beg you to allow
me to work in my special field,

even at the lowest level.

But no answer ever came.

The state had
decided not to sh**t him.

They had a crueler fate
in mind for the man who did

more than any other to
eliminate famine and hunger,

he would be deliberately
and slowly starved to death.

800,000 other human beings
had starved to death in Leningrad.

Besieged by the German forced
from September of 1941 until

January of 1944, the
city somehow still managed

to hold out against
the relentless as*ault.

The meager rations of two
slices of bread a day had

run out long before, and
the protectors of Vavilov's

treasure began to succumb to
hunger amidst the plenty that

their sacred honor
prevented them from consuming.

Botanist Alexander Stchukin,
specialist in groundnuts.

Liliya Rodina, expert on oats.

Dimitry Ivanov,
world authority on rice.

The botanists
perished from hunger,

and yet not a grain of rice in the
collection was unaccounted for.

And what of Vavilov's
nemesis, Trofim Lysenko?

He maintained his death
grip on Soviet agriculture

and biology for
another two decades,

until three of Russia's
most distinguished scientists

publicly denounced him for his
pseudoscience and his other crimes.

And what of Vavilov's brother,
Sergey, the physicist?

Stalin made him chairman of
the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

After Stalin's death and
the recognition of the damage

he and Lysenko had
done to the Soviet Union,

Nikolai Vavilov could once
again be talked about in public.

The Institute of Plant
Industry was renamed after him,

and it still thrives.

And this is here because
of his life and work.

This Svalbard Global Seed
Vault is buried deep beneath

the Earth at the
top of the world.

It can hold four and a half million
kinds of seeds underground.

So why didn't the botanists at the
Institute eat a single grain of rice?

Why didn't they distribute
the seeds and nuts and potatoes

to the people of Leningrad
who were dying of starvation

every day for
more than two years?

Did you eat today?

If the answer is yes, then
you probably ate something that

descended from the seeds that
the botanists died to protect.

They gave their lives for us.

If only our future was as real and
precious to us as it was to them.