Stalin Liked Gardening Too

There is always a slightly smug assumption surrounding gardening that it is an inherently wholesome activity. You picture decent retired couples in straw hats discussing delphiniums while Radio 4 murmurs gently in the background. Gardeners are thought of as patient, nurturing souls at one with nature. The sort of people who apologise to worms.

And yet one of history's most prolific mass murderers absolutely loved gardening. Stalin was apparently obsessed with it. He spent hours in his dacha (above) tending plants, discussing grafting techniques, selecting trees, and fussing over lemon bushes. One rather imagines the Politburo nervously complimenting the begonias while trying not to get shot.

It does rather undermine the theory that gardening reveals moral virtue. In fact, when you think about it, gardening contains quite a few alarming features. Gardeners are forever quietly killing things. Entire species of plant are declared undesirable and ruthlessly eradicated. Slugs are poisoned. Aphids are gassed. Weeds are exterminated with chemicals that sound like rejected First World War weapons programmes. Perfectly innocent shrubs are "cut back hard" for failing to conform ideologically to the overall design vision.

There is also the authoritarian tendency. Gardeners cannot simply allow nature to exist freely. Oh no. Every living thing must know its place. This one climbs here. That one flowers there. This hedge shall be straight. These roses must comply with regulations regarding spacing and discipline. Any deviation from the Five Year Planting Plan is dealt with severely.

The allotment world is particularly revealing. Entire cold wars exist between elderly men over bean encroachment and suspiciously oversized marrows. Somewhere in Britain at this very moment there is a retired chartered surveyor glaring at next door's runner beans with the same expression Stalin probably reserved for agricultural dissent.

Then there is the sheer emotional volatility of gardeners. A person can spend all winter tenderly nurturing seedlings indoors, speaking to them like infants, then erupt into incandescent fury because a squirrel ate half a tomato.

It is also worth noting that dictators in general often seem oddly keen on rustic hobbies. They like uniforms, maps, architecture, and gardens. There is clearly a psychological overlap between wanting absolute control over Eastern Europe and becoming extremely agitated about bindweed.

None of this, of course, means gardeners are secretly tyrants. Most are perfectly harmless people with muddy knees and an alarming knowledge of compost acidity. But it does suggest that tending a herbaceous border is not, in itself, proof of saintliness.

Somewhere there is probably a man quietly pruning roses while simultaneously posting comments underneath newspaper articles demanding the deportation of everyone under forty.

And if you visit a garden centre on a bank holiday weekend, observe carefully. Behind the polite discussions about peat-free compost lies a faint atmosphere of suppressed territorial aggression. Britain is only one badly managed hanging basket shortage away from open conflict.

Still, it keeps people occupied. Better they spend Sunday afternoon arguing about lupins than attempting to run the country. Stalin rather demonstrated the risks of combining the two.