![]() In the late 1920s, Stalin announced his first five-year plan, aiming to revolutionise agriculture through the collectivization of farms and plant-breeding programmes. As mortality rates soared, bodies accumulated outside hospitals, left in decomposing piles in the absence of anyone with enough strength to bury them. Parents were forced to forage for acorns and tufts of grass to feed their children while peasants fled their villages in search of food. Back in the USSR, he had witnessed first-hand the series of famines that had plagued the Soviet Union, the result of continuous war, outdated farming methods, and a hostile climate in which huge swathes of land languished in the permanent grip of ice and snow. The leader of the seed-scavenging expedition was an adventurous young botanist called Nikolai Vavilov. ![]() ![]() Pushing the crocodiles aside with the butts of their rifles, the men waded across the river towards the highlands to complete the aim of the expeditionâ -to collect an assortment of seeds to bring back to their extensive seed repository in the Soviet Union. The river was turbulent with the thrashing mass of crocodiles before turning a deep crimson, their bodies floating belly up. When they were ready to cross the river, the men unslung their rifles and began shooting into the water, continuing for hundreds of rounds. Down below, the Blue Nile glistened with the reflection of the afternoon sun and the blinking eyes of a float of crocodiles. ![]() Leaving the forest, the group slowly made their way to the bottom of a canyon, clinging from tree to tree to prevent hurtling off the steep slope. Accompanied by a group of local guides, the young traveller had been hiking for weeks through the gorges of eastern Africa, keeping a close watch for armed bandits or stalking leopards. On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of Abyssinia, ducking under low-hanging branches and stopping to inspect the wild coffee trees lining his path. ![]()
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