"For the members of the institute, the most pressing question was how – or if – they could protect the seed bank from their own hunger. The first member of the institute to die of starvation was Vavilov’s former secretary, Pavel Gusev, just two months into the siege..."

Jessie Childs reviews #SimonParkin's #TheForbiddenGardenOfLeningrad

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n02/jessie-childs/resident-bean-expert

#SiegeOfLeningrad #WWII #SovietHistory #SovietScience #SeedBanks #biodiversity #NikolaiVavilov #books @bookstodon @histodons

"In 1941, as Nazi forces laid siege to #Leningrad, a group of #SovietBotanists faced an unthinkable choice: eat their life’s work, a rare seed bank, or starve to death. This is the dilemma at the heart of #SimonParkin’s story about the world's first seed bank and its dedicated #botanists."

#EurasianKnot welcomes the author of #TheForbiddenGarden
https://soundcloud.com/euraknot/ek057

#SiegeOfLeningrad #WWII #SovietHistory #SovietScience #SeedBanks #biodiversity #NikolaiVavilov #books @bookstodon @histodons

"It is argued that Soviet scientific work related to climate modification at a global scale was characterized by a considered and wide-ranging discussion that embodied a clear sense of the inherent dangers associated with manipulating complex natural systems."

Interesting retrospective, leading to our present discussions of geoengineering and particularly SRM.

#SolarRadiationManagement
#Geoengineering
#SovietScience
#SovietClimateResearch

https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.829?af=R