Atlas of the Armenian SSR

Summary

This paper reviews the 1961 Atlas of the Armenian SSR, a comprehensive national atlas published for the 40th anniversary of the republic. The atlas includes sections on natural conditions, population, culture, economy, and history, containing 77 physical-geographic maps, 50 climatic and phenological maps, 14 population and cultural maps, 66 economic maps, and 17 historical maps. A variety of cartographic techniques are employed, including hypsometric tinting combined with hill shading, as well as geological, engineering-geological, hydrogeological, soil, vegetation, and zoogeographical maps. The reviewer both praises the atlas for its innovative synthetic maps and combined methods, and criticizes certain shortcomings such as insufficient explanatory detail in legends and regionalization units. The atlas is regarded as a significant step forward in Soviet national atlas cartography. The latter part briefly discusses the application of the dot method for mapping agricultural sectors, distinguishing dots representing absolute values and percentages, and citing examples from atlases of Moscow Oblast, the BSSR, and Soviet agriculture.