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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Inside the secret world of Russia's Cold War map making. |
| 2015-07-20 |
| [WIRED] The year was 1989. The Soviet Union was falling apart, and some of its military officers were busy selling off the pieces. By the time Guy arrived at the helipad, most of the goods had already been off-loaded from the chopper and spirited away. The crates he'd come for were all that was left. As he pried the lid off one to inspect the goods, he got a powerful whiff of pine. It was a box inside a box, and the space in between was packed with juniper needles. Guy figured the guys who packed it were used to handling cargo that had to get past drug-sniffing dogs, but it wasn't drugs he was there for. Inside the crates were maps, thousands of them. In the top right corner of each one, printed in red, was the Russian word секрет. Secret. The maps were part of one of the most ambitious cartographic enterprises ever undertaken. During the Cold War, the Soviet military mapped the entire world, parts of it down to the level of individual buildings. The Soviet maps of US and European cities have details that aren't on domestic maps made around the same time, things like the precise width of roads, the load-bearing capacity of bridges, and the types of factories. They're the kinds of things that would come in handy if you're planning a tank invasion. Or an occupation. Things that would be virtually impossible to find out without eyes on the ground. Given the technology of the time, the Soviet maps are incredibly accurate. Even today, the US State Department uses them (among other sources) to place international boundary lines on official government maps. Lengthy, includes a map of Northern, Virginia and the Pentagon in Cyrillic. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #4 When I worked for a digital mapping company in the 90s such a set of maps would have been very helpful. What my company did eventually was replaced by internet and smart phone maps but someone had to make the digital maps for the apps. Russians should have sold them. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2015-07-20 14:26 |
| #3 Worse, the maps for the masses were deliberately distorted with a special projection that introduced random variations. “The main goal was to crush the contents of maps so it would be impossible to recreate the real geography of a place from the map,” Postnikov tells me. Well-known landmarks like rivers and towns were depicted, but the coordinates, directions, and distances were all off, making them useless for navigation or military planning, should they fall into enemy hands. The cartographer who devised this devious scheme was awarded the State Prize by Stalin. Sure enough. They did. Devious buggers. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2015-07-20 12:04 |
| #2 EU, I heard that too. The idea was that if you belonged there, you knew your way around. If you didn't belong there, you deserved to get lost. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2015-07-20 11:55 |
| #1 I heard or read somewhere, can't remember the source, that Soviets did not publish good maps of Russia because they didn't want potential adversaries (NATO) to have that kind of information. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2015-07-20 11:51 |