About the Maps of Volume II of the BSAM

M. A. Sergeev reviews the representation of the Soviet North in volume II of the Great Soviet World Atlas. He praises the general and regional maps for clearly showing the distribution of population, industry, hunting and fishing activities, agriculture, transport, and trade, and for distinguishing industrial development from other northern livelihoods. Examples from Krasnoyarsk, Arkhangelsk, Omsk, and the Far East demonstrate how inset and supplementary maps make complex economic patterns legible. His criticisms include misplaced settlements, weaknesses in the depiction of Yakutia’s population density, the conflation of fishing and marine-mammal hunting in the pre-revolutionary inset, and omissions affecting reindeer husbandry and several industries. Sergeev considers the maps exceptionally useful for teaching and economic research, crediting their current, checked information to painstaking work with unpublished departmental records in a field with few economic publications.