National atlases of socialist countries in the service of the national economy. Economic-geographical maps in national atlases

Summary

In the available opening and closing sections, Rado and Bermat discuss how national atlases of socialist countries can support economic planning and international economic cooperation. They argue that economic-geographical maps should show relationships among production, population, natural conditions, and transport to inform industrial location, regional specialization, and integrated regional development. They criticize atlases that primarily display statistics by administrative units without adequately representing geographical relationships, while praising the regional economic synthesis maps in the 1958 Atlas of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. In their account, the predominance of sectoral planning has limited practical atlas use, whereas territorial planning increases demand for economic-geographical research and map series. The closing sections examine the potential contribution of national atlases to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance’s coordination of national plans and production specialization. They emphasize comparisons of natural resources, labour, transport, existing equipment, and production traditions. Examples involving coal mining and tractor manufacturing illustrate the need to consider production costs, transport costs, and production scale together. The authors propose a coordinating commission to harmonize atlas themes, symbols, and scales and discuss cartographic methods and technical issues, improving comparability and preparing the basis for a future comprehensive international atlas of socialist countries.