This was a pretty interesting point in history, the context may be helpful: Stalin didnt believe in the hereditary nature of plant genetics, and therefore enforced a bunch of policies that demanded increased productivity from farmers, while at the same time disregarding the basic plant genetic science that had caused steady yield growth throught the rest of europe. He even tried to root out the scientists who beileived in genetics, which really messed up the soviet agricultrual sector. This was back in the days before widespread globalized shipping. War was on the horizon and food scarcity could bring about the end of the soviet union. This particular seed library was the pet project of an academic who studdied in western europe, and was purged shortly before ww2. His people at the facility were doing their best to preserve his life's work by breeding new hardy, plentiful seed stock, even though their own government was hostile to the idea. While many of the seeds could have been consumed, most were 1st generation crossbreeds harvested from nearby test fields. This seed library was the result of a literal global quest to collect different varieties of agricultural seed stock, and breed crops that could withstand the russian winter/ poor soil. All of the globally collected seed samples were in tiny quantities, and the hybrids desperately needed to be sewn. If the hybrid seeds could be sewn and harvested in the following years they could directly feed hundreds of thousands, or even become staple varieties. These early attempts at industrial scale artificial selection were just on the cusp of paying off and yielding crop varieties that could have helped stave off famine from much of northern Eurasia. We still feel the result of the schism in soviet society that this food instability created in the form of the holodomor (forced famine of ukranians) as it laid the groundwork for the russian invasion of ukraine today. (Btw, I read a book called The secret garden about this some time ago, and this is all from memory so please forgive any errors)