Cartography in the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1917–1991

Summary

The article reviews cartography in the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1917 to 1991. Its original abstract identifies natural-resource mapping, thematic cartography, comprehensive global and national atlases, and cartographic theories and schools as its scope. The visible main text chiefly covers prewar work. In the early Soviet period, the Commission for Study of the Natural Productive Forces of Russia and its successor organization conducted multidisciplinary expeditions, undertaking surveys and compiling or revising topographic, geological, soil, and vegetation maps to inventory resources and improve coverage of poorly mapped regions. Newly established specialist institutes assumed substantial thematic mapping responsibilities in the late 1920s and 1930s, moving from regional investigations toward national compilations. Under L. I. Prasolov, compilation of the 1:1,000,000 all-Union soil map began in 1934, with publication starting five years later. Geomorphological work produced the 1:1,500,000 map of the European USSR in 1939, depicting terrain dissection and the morphology of sea and lake floors and shores. A 1:10,000,000 geomorphological regionalization map of the USSR, also published in 1939, applied unified regionalization principles; the author identifies it as the beginning of the Institute of Geography’s school of morphogenetic geomorphological mapping. The supplied ending consists of references and does not establish the arguments of the omitted wartime and postwar sections.