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Inside the secret world of Russia's Cold War map making.
[WIRED] The year was 1989. The Soviet Union was falling apart, and some of its military officers were busy selling off the pieces. By the time Guy arrived at the helipad, most of the goods had already been off-loaded from the chopper and spirited away. The crates he'd come for were all that was left. As he pried the lid off one to inspect the goods, he got a powerful whiff of pine. It was a box inside a box, and the space in between was packed with juniper needles. Guy figured the guys who packed it were used to handling cargo that had to get past drug-sniffing dogs, but it wasn't drugs he was there for.Inside the crates were maps, thousands of them. In the top right corner of each one, printed in red, was the Russian word секрет. Secret. The maps were part of one of the most ambitious cartographic enterprises ever undertaken. During the Cold War, the Soviet military mapped the entire world, parts of it down to the level of individual buildings. The Soviet maps of US and European cities have details that aren't on domestic maps made around the same time, things like the precise width of roads, the load-bearing capacity of bridges, and the types of factories. They're the kinds of things that would come in handy if you're planning a tank invasion. Or an occupation. Things that would be virtually impossible to find out without eyes on the ground. Given the technology of the time, the Soviet maps are incredibly accurate. Even today, the US State Department uses them (among other sources) to place international boundary lines on official government maps. Lengthy, includes a map of Northern, Virginia and the Pentagon in Cyrillic. Posted by: Besoeker 2015-07-20 |
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