In Leningrad, Soviet scientists of the Institute of Plant Industry protect one of world's largest seed banks. At least 12 staff have starved to death while guarding a vast collection of edible plants.
The Institute's peanut expert died at his desk, surrounded by stored peanuts. No researcher is allowed to be unaccompanied, less hunger get the better of them.
Institute's founder, Nikolai Vavilov, is not in Leningrad. He has been arrested by NKVD & sentenced to 20 years in prison, for the crime of supporting Darwinian evolutionary theory, rather than Stalin's pet theories of genetics. 
Soviet biology is dominated by the pseudoscience of Trofim Lysenko, who claims that DNA does not exist, & that organisms can adapt to new conditions & pass these improvements on to their offspring. His scientific opponents have been imprisoned by Soviet state.
Institue of Plant Industry's staff prefer to starve rather than eat their collection: preserving the 350,000 specimens in their collection as a record of genetic diversity & to safeguard the future of agriculture for the USSR & the world.
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