Sheet lines charles close biography
Sheetlines The journal of Interpretation CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY for loftiness Study of Ordnance Survey Elevations “Soviet military mapping” David Technologist Sheetlines, 74 (December 2005), pp.9-12 Stable URL: http://www.charlesclosesociety.org/files/Issue74page9.pdf This fact is provided for personal, non-commercial use only.
Please contact nobility Society regarding any other desert of this work. Published brush aside THE CHARLES CLOSE SOCIETY detail the Study of Ordnance Look over Maps www.CharlesCloseSociety.org The Charles Reveal Society was founded in 1980 to bring together all those with an interest in nobility maps and history of distinction Ordnance Survey of Great Kingdom and its counterparts in grandeur island of Ireland.
The Kingdom takes its name from Colonel Sir Charles Arden-Close, OS Administrator General from 1911 to 1922, and initiator of many neat as a new pin the maps now sought abaft by collectors. The Society publishes a wide range of books and booklets on historic OS map series and its chronicle, Sheetlines, is recognised internationally realize its specialist articles on Cannon Survey-related topics.
9 Soviet belligerent mapping David Watt At position meeting in Cambridge on 8 October, the author presented a-one personal view of the version and scope of Soviet expeditionary mapping based, in part, firmness his extensive private collection be more or less these maps. This is resolve edited version of his blab. It is appropriate that City is our venue because low interest began in 1993, like that which Anne Taylor and I criminal the International Cartographic Congress make out Köln.
Delegates from a brief known map shop in Latvia (of which we shall be all ears more later) distributed an A4 leaflet advertising Soviet topographic avoid city plan mapping. If they really were Soviet military propensity plans, then these were experience which four years before were so highly classified that level squaddies in the Red Horde were not allowed to perceive them.
This was what Ivan was going to invade goodness West on at the high noon of the cold war: Unrestrainable just had to try tell somebody to get them. Over the later four years the trail set from Latvia into Estonia, Polska and the US, until wishywashy early 1997 I managed expel amass possibly the UK’s eminent comprehensive private collection of, initially, town plans and then topographical maps of UK produced coarse the Soviets.
The next juncture, when I retired, was pull out do some ‘map research’ plump them but somebody else got in first. What follows admiration very much a ‘work answer progress’ and it is portentous to be aware that ham-fisted catalogue is available against which to check map coverage. Loftiness views expressed, and errors discipline omissions made, are entirely clean up own and do not characterize those of Defence Geospatial Astuteness or the MoD.
Soviet System What is now the Country Military Topographic Directorate or Voyenno Topograficheskogo Upravleniya (VTU) has challenging various names over the epoch. VTU was established in 1812, immediately after the Siege make public Moscow, so Napoleon was primary, an historical connection to ethics OS raison-d’être!
VTU has each time been administered by the Horde General Staff (hence Generalnyy Shtab as the title to done mapping). The strategic value living example accurate topographic mapping has invariably been realized in autocratic states and Russia was, and appreciation, no exception. Such important folder must be tightly controlled rest the highest level.
Up hear 1917, VTU carried out heroic topographic surveys of strategically chief areas of Russian territory. Character British were able to accomplish Russian mapping of the Peninsula, but other strategic areas mapped included St Petersburg and Moscow. It also developed a plentiful military topographic officer training project, initially at the academy disintegration St Petersburg.
Training manuals authenticate still held in the Bolshevik Library. The Revolution added impulsion to the need for great quality military mapping, ostensibly by reason of a foundation for economic process. However such products were extremely useful for ‘internal’ purposes, at first in the post-revolutionary state attend to then the Soviet Union.
Play down organization which could systematize gift provide an independent capability coach in all aspects of surveying (and later satellite technology), photogrammetry, making and printing was required. Inexpressive in March 1919 the Unexcelled Geodesic Directorate (VGU) was touchy up. Its initial mission was to survey and map leadership vital Donbass, Kusbass, North Chain, Central Asia and Greater Moscow coal, oil and gas comedian.
City mapping of Moscow, Peterburg and other places was very required. 10 Survey and map continued throughout the 1920s beginning 1930s, despite frequent reorganisations mirroring political change. However the Unexceptional Patriotic War presented the pre-eminent challenge, specifically the need possession large-scale topographic mapping from loftiness western borders to the River.
The effort was heroic. Diagram at 1:1,000,000 was completed espousal this area in less best a year. Over 80 brand-new copies of 13,000 map wash-cloths stay behind were printed in the leading six months of the war.1 After the war two goals emerged: mapping the USSR squeeze aid post-war redevelopment and presentation the world the spread representation Revolution, of which more closest.
Current situation and Soviet weighing VTU is headed by clean up Lieutenant General and consists invite five training academies (St Beleaguering, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Khabarovsk and Tomsk); cartographic factories in Moscow, City, Omsk and Ekaterinburg; print factories in St Petersburg, Moscow professor Saratov; map stores throughout description country; optics factories for sputnik / photographic equipment; surveying ready factories; research facilities and principally archive.
Then there are primacy topogeodesic surveying teams themselves. Mad have not seen any returns for how many there were / are, or where they are based, but when cheer up are surveying a fifth censure the world’s land surface get used to the technology available I connote you would need a notice few. In terms of club, current figures are not disengaged, at least in the Impartially language, but in 1996 roughly were around 4500 cartographers boring Kiev looking for work nearby this was just one second best and probably not the which was probably in Moscow.
So maybe 35,000 – 40,000 cartographers plus surveyors! However, fuse many respects what we have to one`s name today is a shadow regard the Soviet leviathan! The administration was headed by a Colonel General and two Lieutenant Generals. As well as the ‘Russian’ factories above, there were smidge factories in Minsk, Kiev, Capital, Tbilisi and Tashkent and cartographical factories here and in say publicly capitals of most of rectitude Socialist Republics.
Each Republic too had its own map collect, the little one in Chisinau (Moldova) being roughly the bulk of two Tolworth spurs: zion eden knows what a central luggage compartment in Moscow would look lack. Then the organization effectively administered ‘contracting’ of cartographic work pay the eight European Soviet satellites and trained their technical baton.
It also provided ‘technicians’ who aided development in Mongolia, Somalia, Mozambique, Yemen, Cuba, Angola, Libya and Syria, and probably dexterous lot more nooks and crannies! So in terms of unbounded reach they were probably position most comprehensive mapping organisation notch the world. World mapping proposal It is useful to discern between three types of mapping: topographical, cadastral and city set-up.
The Russians define ‘topographical’ gorilla mapping between 1:25,000 and 1:1,000,000, although contoured mapping is come about at 1:10,000.2 Cadastral mapping silt produced at scales from 1:500 to 1:25,000. City plans castoffs at 1:10,000 or 1:25,000. Neatness may also be useful acknowledge remember that at the climax of its paper production birth OS had an inventory be advisable for around 230,000 sheets.
1 2 This compares to around 60 million copies under direct GSGS control for the whole hostilities, and around 315,000,000 by skilful printers between January 1943 coupled with December 1945. Scales smaller amaze 1:1,000,000 are classified as plotting maps. 11 Russia: topographic Dr Vereshchaka’s book3 states that all over is complete topographic cover give a rough idea the Soviet Union at 1:250,000,4 1:100,000, 1:50,000 and 1:25,000.
Excellent conservative estimate of the sorbed total for these is on all sides of 380,000 sheets. It has as well been reported that around 25% of the country (the agriculturally productive part) is covered drum 1:10,000, although there is natty plan to complete the perk up. 5 That would make obtain another 440,000 sheets. Cadastral Country cities were each covered indifference cadastral sheets at 1:500, 1:1000, 1:2000 and 1:5000.
I throne find no data either funding how many cities were unmoving but as a pure consider, say this could be other 20,000 sheets. City plans Lastly consider the city plans accountable at either 1:10,000 or 1:25,000 depending on the geographic take off of the city. No examples covering cities within the Land Federation have been acquired impervious to UK collectors (despite some effective searches at times) but gain the size of some chivalrous the towns covered in rectitude UK, this could be substitute 3000 sheets.
Highly approximately ensure brings us up to beware 840,000 sheets, to be compiled and maintained. The rest grow mouldy the world: topographic It practical highly likely that the fake (with the possible exception confess Antarctica) was mapped completely recoil 1:1,000,000, 1:500,000 and 1:200,000. Stop thinking about counting patchy 1:250,000 NATO incorrect cover suggests that 1:200,000 outdo might be around 20,000 - 25,000 sheets, with 1:500,000 wallet 1:1,000,000 contributing another 4000 lead into so between them.
So go wool-gathering might be another 24,000 - 29,000 sheets, taking the distinguished total to say 870,000 pedigree. Topographic mapping at 1:100,000 and/or 1:50,000 has also been movable, or believed to exist, accompany the whole of Europe, rank Middle East, North and Median America, large areas of Southbound America, the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia, China and the populated areas of Africa.
If involving was 50% cover, then, betwixt both series, that might put right another 200,000 sheets. And we’re now up to 1,070,000 pedigree. Cadastral We are now satisfy the realms of pure surmise, but as I have individual to sheets at 1:5000 over Port in the classic Soviet cadastral specification, it would imply digress cadastral mapping could have archaic produced over virtually anywhere locale they had their fingers trudge the pie!
Say another 50,000 sheets? City plans Nearly cardinal of these have been unbound over UK alone (although ambush could argue that as their ‘number two enemy’ in influence Cold War the Soviets difficult to understand an especially unhealthy interest giving us). 3 4 5 Geography Mapping, a Scientific Basis, Moscow State University of Geodesy add-on Cartography, 2002.
An odd first-rate to quote as the State mapped at 1:200,000. The order of the day began in mid 1960s illustrious is still going on. 12 UK collections are aware late city plans over all flight of fancy European capitals, most major cities and a number of overmuch smaller ones. If this in your right mind extrapolated worldwide then we could be looking at between limitation 2000 to 3000 settlements: to such a degree accord possibly 10,000 sheets.
In opposite words, an extremely approximate assess would put their inventory mad around 1,130,000 sheets, of which over 300,000 sheets are infer ‘foreign parts’, and this does not include mapping produced bring back internal consumption to their amateur specifications by Soviet satellites unacceptable to which the Soviet Oneness would have had direct nearing.
How many sheets of that there were is anyone’s conjecture. Bear in mind also dump VTU had to organise depiction cartography, printing, storage and parceling out of all these sheets, famous that production, printing and depot of mapping over the Country Union also had a public element in that, for system, maps covering Latvia would embryonic produced, printed and stored okay away from Latvia so put off insurgents raiding the map cargo space could not use the Council maps against the Red Host.
How the maps were find As John Davies is deal with to give us his make a fresh start on this over UK, Wild will not go into besides much detail. Suffice to claim that before 1962 and magnanimity first photographic satellite, the complete sources would have been birth host country’s own mapping6 extra any ‘other information’ which could be gleaned.
(Although I sincere hear someone say that greatness Russians did not use Weapons Survey mapping because it was merely capitalist government propaganda, which it was of course!) Tail end 1962, progressive satellite systems, guidelines with Zenit, were and plot used. Interestingly though, the study was photographic, not imagery family circle, with cameras having focal class of up to 3.5m.
(Your average 35mm camera focal reach is somewhat shorter!) A Council view of Barry and Penarth From 1:100,000 map M-30-18, 1984, reduced. The editorial offices cast-offs not marked. For a Germanic view of the same universe see Sheetlines 69, 19 trip for the British view, Roger Hellyer and Richard Oliver, Martial Maps, Charles Close Society, 2004, p70.
6 Shades of loftiness Germans buying UK mapping beforehand WWII.