The World Through a Red Lens

By Dianne Timblin

Anthropology Cartography Review Scientists Nightstand

This Article From Issue

March-April 2018

Volume 106, Number 2

Page 122

DOI: 10.1511/2018.106.2.122

THE RED ATLAS: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World. John Davies and Alexander J. Kent. xiv + 234 pp. University of Chicago Press, 2017. $35.

Ever heard of the Topographic Directorate of the General Staff of the Soviet Army? No? That’s just how they liked it. Meanwhile, its staff meticulously mapped the world, right down to the load-bearing capacity of bridges and the girth, height, and separation of forest trees.

Maps produced in secret Soviet facilities typically captured extremely detailed information about marine areas. Sometimes the data mirrored those found in the official maps of other nations and had apparently been copied from them. Other times, often on the same map, data points contradicted these sources. For example, the Soviet map of Southampton (*right*) echoes the east and west channels’ dredging depths shown in the UK Admiralty’s official map (*left*). However, spot depths in the shallows differ. Records in the UK National Archives describe several unexplained visits by Soviet vessels to British ports and waterways from 1963 to 1965; the authors conclude that crew members may have been surveying waterways.
**From *The Red Atlas*.**

Soviet military map makers were prolific as well as thorough. Cartographers John Davies and Alexander J. Kent estimate that these workers may have produced a million different maps, adding that “wherever you are on the planet reading this . . . the place [was] likely. . . mapped in detail by the Soviet Union. At least once.” The project got going under Stalin, and it continued until the fall of the USSR. The maps were secret, many of them highly classified, and kept under tight control. Cold War diplomats and spies relied on them, and the army kept the vast store of maps on hand for potential use in invasion and occupation plans.

Created using data from sources such as satellites, reference works, and spies, the Soviet maps were often more accurate than other nations’ maps of their own territory—or any other maps, for that matter. During the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, American pilots used 1980s Soviet maps of the region.

Soviet military cartographers incorporated a remarkable amount of data into their maps, but it was not always up to date by the time a map was produced. In this detail from a District of Columbia map compiled in 1973 and printed in 1975, purple object 201 and the adjacent green object, 59, represent temporary facilities constructed during the World Wars; both buildings were demolished in 1970. A street labeled “Washington Drive” in Russian, shown to bisect the National Mall lengthwise, also did not exist.

**From *The Red Atlas*.**

Because the cartographers were working with incomplete and occasionally outdated or otherwise inaccurate data, the maps aren’t always completely accurate. A 1970s-era depiction of the District of Columbia, for example, still included temporary facilities used during World Wars I and II that had been destroyed a few years before the map was compiled.

Regardless, these masterpieces of cartographic art and science are unfailingly stunning. In the 1970s, their makers began using 10-color printing, which requires painstaking accuracy but allows for more granular color coding. Likewise, The Red Atlas is gorgeously designed. The maps have been lovingly reproduced, and great care has gone into the details of the book’s design—from the patriotic crimson endpapers to the back cover’s trompe l’oeil envelope closure, with its added note of Cold War spycraft whimsy.

With characteristic attention to detail, Soviet military mapmakers recorded whether major roads fell under federal or provincial government jurisdictions. As this portion of a map for an area near Paterson, New Jersey, shows, maps of the United States indicated federal roads with a rectangular symbol, as well as the letter T for interstates; state roads were marked with a circle. The key above translates as “a) Government (transcontinental roads marked with letter T), b) State.”

**From *The Red Atlas*.**

A version of this review appears online alongside capsule reviews of 11 other STEM titles. See “New Readings for a New Year, 2018.”

Dianne Timblin is book review editor for American Scientist.

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