Nikolai Vavilov's Seed Bank
Coming to Wonder People on 27 November 2026.
Across five continents Nikolai Vavilov and three colleagues from the Leningrad Institute of Plant Industry climb, dig and carry seeds home — wild wheat off a Pamir scree slope, potatoes down Inca terraces, emmer across a Blue Nile gorge — building the world's first great seed bank at 44 Herzen Street under the dome of St Isaac's. In 1940 Vavilov is taken from a Carpathian roadside and his satchel spills into the grass; his staff gather every packet and carry on. Then the Wehrmacht closes the ring. The last evacuation train leaves without the crates; the three survivors drag them back on a handcart through Palace Square, barricade the cellar against rats, bind the tin boxes shut, and starve beside sacks of rice and almonds rather than eat a single sample. Alexander Stchukin dies at his desk with groundnut packets in his fist. In the spring of 1942 Vadim Lekhnovich and Lidia Rodina dig beds in the shelled turf of the Field of Mars to keep the potato lines alive, and in 1945 they walk the seed back out to the ruined fields of Pavlovsk and put it in the ground.
About this story
- Length
- 10 illustrated pages
Who appears
- Nikolai Vavilov — Botanist, founder and director of the seed collection
- Alexander Stchukin — Keeper of rice, groundnuts and oilseeds; the oldest of the staff
- Vadim Lekhnovich — Potato curator; keeps the living tuber collection alive through the siege
- Lidia Rodina — Keeper of the oat and barley lines; expedition cataloguer
What happens on 27 November 2026
This story is finished and scheduled. On 27 November 2026 it opens here in full — every page illustrated — as part of Wonder People. Nothing on this page is a placeholder: the story exists, it has been reviewed, and this is its address.
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