On the contents of volume II of the Great Soviet World Atlas

This article reviews the aims, structure, and cartographic methodology of the second volume of the Great Soviet World Atlas. Produced in accordance with the 1933 Soviet decree on the atlas and with Lenin’s proposals for Soviet cartography, the volume was conceived as an integrated synthesis of physical, economic, and political geography rather than as a collection of separate specialist atlases. It focuses on the union republics, territories, and regions of the USSR and also includes political-administrative maps and a series devoted to the history of the Russian Civil War. More than 40 percent of the volume consists of general reference maps. These employ standardized symbols, settlement classifications, and a unified hypsometric system of elevation and depth zones, thereby enabling comparison among different regions. Drawing on recent ground surveys, aerial photography, and geographical research, the maps represent relief, hydrography, transportation networks, and settlements in considerable detail. Approximately another 40 percent is devoted to economic maps designed to show the location, scale, specialization, and development of industry, agriculture, transportation, and mineral resources. Industrial production is represented through precisely located proportional circles, with colored sectors indicating major branches and gross output; agriculture is depicted through background colors, hatching, and symbols selected according to the regional economic importance of crops and livestock. Physical-geographical information—including relief, soils, climate, and vegetation—is retained to clarify relationships between production and environment. The article argues that industry and agriculture require distinct representational techniques because their spatial patterns differ fundamentally, and that a single composite indicator would obscure these differences. It presents the resulting maps as a new Soviet model of comprehensive economic cartography and emphasizes the systematic depiction of the USSR’s multinational administrative organization and Civil War history. Although the author acknowledges overcrowding on some maps, incomplete expression of regional specificity, and insufficient color differentiation, he concludes that the volume resolved major scientific and technical problems and constituted a significant achievement of Soviet geography and cartography. The discussion also reveals the atlas’s explicitly Marxist-Leninist interpretive framework and its role in presenting socialist development, territorial integration, and state power.