Geographical atlases of the Soviet Union (history, principles, and compilation methods)

Salishchev reviews the history, principles, and organization of major Soviet geographical atlases, focusing on scientific reference works. He traces principles of comprehensive coverage, multifaceted representation of phenomena and their relationships, depiction of historical change, data currency, and cartographic clarity to Lenin’s directives. The account examines industrial and regional atlases, the Great Soviet World Atlas, postwar ocean atlases, and the 1954 world reference atlas. Salishchev criticizes early industrial atlases for emphasizing statistics aggregated by administrative units and commends later works for locating enterprises and representing interdependencies among natural phenomena. Compilation of a world physical-geographical atlas had begun. He emphasizes completeness and internal consistency through coordinated projections, scales, indicators, generalization, legends, and reference periods, with adjustments for thematic and regional requirements. Recommended procedures include discussion of the atlas plan, prototype testing, centralized source assessment, shared base maps, and coordination of thematic maps, under the review and direction of an interdisciplinary editorial board and editor-in-chief.