Present status of "The great soviet world atlas" in the United States

Summary

This article assesses the contents, cartographic significance, and availability in the United States of the first two volumes of The Great Soviet World Atlas. Planned in the Soviet Union from 1921 and formally authorized by a 1933 decree, the atlas continued the European tradition of national atlases while surpassing many predecessors in technical production, thematic breadth, and density of geographic information. Volume I, published in 1938 and circulated internationally, contained eighty-three world maps depicting physical, economic, historical, and demographic patterns, together with thirty-six maps of the Soviet Union, detailed regional maps of European Russia, specialized geological, glacial, physiographic, mineral, soil, and vegetation maps, and numerous economic diagrams. It consequently became a major source of Soviet geographic information for American users. Volume II, issued in 1939, provided large-scale political-administrative, survey, physical, demographic, and economic maps of Soviet regions, as well as a separate series on the Civil War. Its extensive treatment of population, industry, agriculture, natural resources, transportation, cities, and regional economies made it the principal geographic reference on the U.S.S.R. for British and American government agencies. Distribution ceased after the outbreak of war because Soviet authorities considered the detailed geographic information a national-security risk, leaving only three known copies in the United States. Responding to wartime intelligence needs, the Office of Strategic Services attempted to reproduce the volume. Ordinary photocopying proved inadequate because some plates employed more than forty colors, hues, and shades, while commercial color printing would have required several years and more than $150,000. The OSS therefore adopted the TRIAK color-photographic process, producing a satisfactory, slightly reduced facsimile in 1943. Distribution was restricted to federal war agencies, with two copies supplied to British governmental repositories. The article judges Volume II unmatched in regional coverage, mapping scale, and economic presentation, and regards it as evidence of the high professional standards of Soviet geography and cartography. It nevertheless identifies two major weaknesses: many economic maps are overcrowded—sometimes combining as many as 125 categories at page-size scales—and the exclusive use of Russian limits accessibility to international researchers. The appended translated contents demonstrate the atlas’s systematic coverage of Soviet republics, autonomous territories, industrial regions, frontier zones, and Civil War campaigns. By 1946, no copy of the presumed third volume had reached the United States, and its contents remained unknown. Overall, the study presents the atlas simultaneously as a landmark scholarly reference, a strategic intelligence asset, and a state-controlled information product, illustrating the tensions among cartographic knowledge, reproduction technology, wartime circulation, and national security.