Introduction to Foreign Atlases: The Soviet World Atlas

This introduction describes the Soviet World Atlas (Атлас Мира), first published in 1954 and republished in 1967. The author praises it as an outstanding atlas of the 1950s, emphasizing its detailed general maps of settlements, administrative divisions and transport routes within the limits of available compilation materials. The article notes that the South China Sea islands are individually marked as belonging to China and presents the atlas as a reference for research, economic development and teaching. Its 283 pages comprise world maps, Soviet Union maps, maps of other countries arranged by continent, and polar maps, at scales from 1:250,000 to 1:50,000,000. Most maps are regional general maps at scales larger than 1:20,000,000 and use a conformal conic projection to facilitate comparison. Relief is represented through contours, hypsometric tinting and scale-dependent cartographic generalization. A separate index contains over 200,000 place names and explanations of non-Russian elements in those names.