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In recent years, many maps produced in the former Soviet Union have become available. However, researchers have focused on topographical maps or those of Western cities produced by the General Staff for military use, and less on maps created by GUGK, the state mapping agency, for domestic purposes, including tourism. By contrast, this paper focuses on maps produced for tourists, whether travelling by private car or on an organized rail or bus tour. The 42 maps reviewed take three main forms: those covering a single administrative region, ranging from an oblast to a Soviet republic; those of a specific tourist area or associated with a literary hero; and strip maps connecting major cities. The paper considers the general design and symbology used on these maps, tracing some of the stylistic changes and developments in the quarter-century prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soviet military maps utilized a comprehensive cartographic symbology that was designed for mapping the globe at various scales, including thousands of towns and cities in street-level detail. This paper presents an analysis of the Soviet symbol specifications, as defined by the official cartographic production documents, and aims to offer some insights into how the challenges of mapping a global diversity of urban and natural environments were addressed. A further stage of the analysis examines a sample of 19 Soviet military city plans to evaluate the implementation of the official symbology specified in the production documents. This finds that barely half of this symbology was utilized and that new symbols were routinely created as improvised solutions. By comparing the theoretical context of the symbology with its real-world application the paper offers a critical appraisal of the versatility of the Soviet approach that may inform current and future global mapping initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plans of world cities outside the USSR that were produced by the Soviet military during the Cold War each include a List of Important Objects. These are items of significant strategic economic, administrative or military importance. This paper examines these object lists from Soviet military plans of British cities and discusses their contents. It concludes that there is considerable variation in their comprehensiveness and some inconsistency in the criteria used to select objects for inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Cruickshank draws on the specification documents to chart the evolution of the topographic mapping initiative and its successive attempts to map the vast domestic territories of the USSR and beyond. One hundred years after the Soviet Union was established, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has unexpectedly reignited the relevance of Soviet mapping and has supplied a more urgent rationale for its study. 12 Postnikov, A.V. (2001) " Maps for Ordinary Consumers versus Maps for the Military: Double Standards of Map Accuracy in Soviet Cartography, 1917-1991 " Cartography and Geographic Information Science 29 (3) pp. 243 - 260. [Extracted from the article]

The appearance of late-Soviet military topographic maps was the outcome of a long series of reviews and revisions of preexisting map designs. These generated publicly-available normative documents and teaching manuals. While most topographic maps of Russia have been secret, these detailed supporting documents were openly published for public sale. These documents and manuals are used to describe the evolution of the designs of Soviet topographic maps at scales from 1:25,000 to 1:100,000 from the Revolutions of 1917 to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. The nature of the maps inherited by the Soviet Union from Imperial Russia, and the prototype maps of the 1920s and 30s are described. These are contrasted with these with those of the Great Patriotic War and of the post-war period. The designs of Soviet topographic maps were continually changing, and great contrasts exist between maps made in the USSR at different dates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hungarian military cartography scarcely mapped foreign areas until World War II. The 1:50 000 survey of the areas occupied temporarily by Hungarian soldiers in the Soviet Union in 1941-1942 was an interesting event. The transformation of Hungary into a Soviet-type system was practically completed by 1950. Being part of the Warsaw Pact, the socialist countries systematically produced maps of the areas of NATO countries: 1:100 000 and 1:200 000 maps (and even smaller scale sheets of larger areas) were made. The topographic maps were completed with many city plans at larger scales. This type of city maps became a special product of Hungary: the Hungarians prepared maps of numerous cities lying outside the mapped area. The Hungarian army was thrown into open combat only once in the Cold War era when it took part in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. This event also has its interest for cartography historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]