Issues in comprehensive geographical mapping and its development in the USSR

Summary

The article examines the theoretical significance, principal forms, historical evolution, and future development of comprehensive geographical cartography, with particular attention to Soviet practice. Maps are presented as tools for locating facts, communicating existing knowledge, comparison, analysis, scientific generalization, and prediction. Their importance increases when geographical inquiry is directed toward practical problems of economic planning, regional development, resource assessment, and the rational distribution of productive forces. Comprehensive mapping seeks to portray natural conditions, resources, population, and economic activity as an interconnected territorial system. The author distinguishes three main approaches: individual synthetic maps combining several related phenomena; comprehensive geographical atlases composed of mutually complementary thematic maps; and coordinated series of specialized maps designed for joint use. Individual comprehensive maps have proved useful in topographic, economic, agricultural, and land-evaluation work. Nevertheless, the restricted graphic capacity of a single sheet, together with the inevitable generalization caused by scale reduction, makes it difficult to represent numerous natural and socioeconomic components clearly and simultaneously. Comprehensive atlases and coordinated thematic series therefore offer much broader analytical possibilities. The article traces their development from eighteenth-century projects, including Kirilov’s plans, through the rise of specialized geographical sciences, Humboldtian ideas concerning the interdependence of natural phenomena, Berghaus’s Physical Atlas, Russian economic-statistical publications, national atlases, and attempts to create global synthetic atlases. This history demonstrates that major atlas projects depend upon mature geographical theory, extensive surveys and statistics, institutional support, and state resources rather than commercial cartography alone. In the Soviet Union, comprehensive mapping became closely connected with socialist construction, territorial planning, and systematic investigation of natural resources, producing major industrial, regional, maritime, and world atlases. The author gives special emphasis to coordination among state geological, soil, geobotanical, geomorphological, and other surveys. Common scales, sheet systems, projections, base maps, classifications, nomenclature, and comparable legends allow specialized maps to be superimposed and jointly analyzed, revealing relationships among soils, relief, parent materials, vegetation, geology, and mineral resources. The State Soil Map of the USSR at 1:1,000,000 exemplifies this approach, while an integrated national series of natural-condition maps at the same scale is identified as a central objective. The article consequently calls for the Soviet Academy of Sciences to coordinate general and specialized state mapping programs. Looking beyond national needs, it proposes that Soviet experience should contribute to a comprehensive series of world maps—including soil, vegetation, and other thematic layers—thereby extending the international 1:1,000,000 world-map initiative from a general reference project into a coordinated instrument for global geographical research.