
Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers - aw3c2
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/secret-cold-war-maps/
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huhtenberg
> _printed in red, was the Russian word секрет. Secret._

That'd be "секретно". "Cекрет" is what pirates print on their treasure maps in
kindergarten :)

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foobarian
Weird that Russians wouldn't use a native root for such a basic concept.
Plenty of Slavic languages have variations on "tajna." Maybe it's some
bureaucratic term using a Westernized root to be fashionable.

~~~
pandaman
In Russian Empire the imperial court mostly spoke French so lower classes,
aspiring to sound more like nobles, borrowed a whole lot of French words.
Because of this many Slavic words now sound archaic or pretensions to a
Russian speaker. E.g. тайна in Russian is more like 'enigma', definitely not
'classified/secret'.

~~~
wordbank
> E.g. тайна in Russian is more like 'enigma', definitely not
> 'classified/secret'.

How about "государственная тайна" then?

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pandaman
It's an established idiom, same as военная тайна or, even better, тайный
советник. Words that make up an idiom do not carry the same meaning outside
one and vice versa.

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mashmac2
I have a colleague who flew relief aid missions into Russia in the 70's and
80's, and said the Soviet civilian maps were just terrible - they'd show roads
in the wrong places and didn't show secret military bases, etc. He figured
this out after accidentally flying over a Soviet army base in what is today
eastern Ukraine... and then talked his East German military connection into
getting him a copy of the military maps.

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ommunist
As a former Soviet geodesist and forest inventory specialist, I must tell that
military 1:50 000 maps are extremely accurate. What was intentionally skewed
are civil 1:250 000 maps. The highest resolution and the best accuracy have
been provided for so called forestry maps (1:10000).

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themodelplumber
Wow, that's fascinating. Would you happen to have a website somewhere that
documents your experiences? I'm really curious.

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ommunist
With all respect, I have to redirect you to public libraries in Russia or for
example Latvia. There was no Internet before 1991. Easy prey is 1: 2 500 000
school political atlas of 1980. There is no city of Daugavpils on the map of
Latvia (2nd largest in Latvia), but smaller towns are mapped. Why? Daugavpils
was military important.

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anovikov
I can hardly believe it. a map from 1983 atlas clearly shows it:
[http://samlib.ru/img/b/balxzinabalxzin_i_a/mappointstreangle...](http://samlib.ru/img/b/balxzinabalxzin_i_a/mappointstreanglestent/scanmapsearch-8.jpg),
and that's just 1 to 10,000,000 map

~~~
ommunist
Well, over here at 1:20 000 000 Lithuania has small Klaipeda, but Latvia has
no Daugavpils. [http://goo.gl/f2ABiy](http://goo.gl/f2ABiy) . It has another
explanation when relates to 1:20M (ports depicted for small republics). But in
my school atlas of the 9th form my home city was absent too on a larger scale
map. Also example - Lithiania has Klaipeda, Latvia has Liepaja, Russia has
Velikiye Luki (rather small one), Belarus has Vitebsk, but no Daugavpils in
Latvia too - [http://goo.gl/VoGtvl](http://goo.gl/VoGtvl).

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gaius
If you are interested in wartime mapmaking and are in the UK, I highly
recommend a visit to Hughenden

[http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hughenden/](http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hughenden/)

And of course it's free for NT members :-)

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gtirloni
_Guy’s company, Omnimap, was one of the first to import Soviet military maps
to the West._

Import is a huge stretch. More like stealing state secrets (and now admitting
to it publicly?).

~~~
gaius
Can you steal from a state that doesn't even exist at the time?

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rdtsc
Yes you can, states that don't exist anymore have other states that inherit
both their treasures, secrets, copyrighted works as well as debts. I
understand that Russia is that state in general. The issue is complicated in
case of ex Soviet Republics presumably.

But I would guess you also can't just storm into Mosfilm or Lenfilm (movie
production studios) and start copying all their movies made during the Soviet
times and selling them for profit.

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ommunist
So and where are IP rights of the still living former Soviet topographers? Is
Mapstor paying royalty to specialists still operating at the 5th Cartography
Enterprise in Minsk? British have been pirates for ages. Old habits never die.

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gwern
Presumably if there were any IP rights at all (what with it being a Communist
state), they were assigned to the USSR government or, like products of the US
government, are born into the public domain.

~~~
psykovsky
So, you mean everything Snowden released is also public domain? Because those
maps were classified, didn't you read?

~~~
ghaff
IANAL, but my understanding is that all (with a few caveats) works created by
US government employees are, in fact, in the public domain but that doesn't
mean they can be made available publicly without restriction.

[http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html](http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html)

The fact that U.S. Government works are not protected under the U.S. Copyright
Law does not create a requirement that all U.S. Government works be made
publicly available without restriction (See Gellman, Robert M. Twin Evils:
Government Copyright and Copyright-like Controls Over Government Information.
Syracuse Law Review, 999, 1995. ADA394923). See Pfeiffer v. Central
Intelligence Agency 62, 60 F.3d 861 (D.C. Cir. 1995). Federal laws and agency
policies govern the public release of U.S. Government information. Examples
include Executive Order 13292, Classified National Security Information , OMB
Circular A-130,63 Management of Federal Information Resources, Department of
Defense Directive 5230.9 Clearance of DoD Information for Public Release,
April 9, 1996, ASD (PA) and DOD Instruction 5230.29 Security and Policy Review
of DoD Information for Public Release.

~~~
ommunist
I like that. Is the US law universally applied in this part of the Galaxy?

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temo4ka
Off topic: is anyone else annoyed by those background-fixed image sections?
Because the height of the section is bigger than the height of the viewport
while scrolling past those sections it appears for a moment that the page
stopped responding; the effect is especially prominent on wide screens.

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cpach
_”Anyone old enough to have lived through those paranoid days of mutually
assured destruction will find it a bit disturbing to see familiar hometown
streets and landmarks labeled in Cyrillic script.”_

I was only a child during the Cold War, but yes, a few years ago when I saw
one of these Soviet maps of the Swedish Tiveden forest, it felt quite strange.
The quality of the map was indeed magnificent.

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n0us
I often struggle to find even the most basic information in online maps.
Worse, when I am in a rural area and have no service I find no service at all.
I've thought recently about keeping some paper maps in my car for such
occasions, might have to look into getting copies of some of these.

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xnbya
In the UK on bing maps you can view the OS maps, they are probably the most
detailed online maps.

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david-given
There aren't many things which the British do really, really well, but the
Ordnance Survey is one of them.

Bing have a license, but it's geolocked so non-UK people don't see the OS
maps. streetmap.co.uk is where I go; the actual website is terrible but they
have the OS maps in 1:25000 and 1:50000 (and some of the non-topographic
smaller scale maps):

[http://streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?x=191074&y=840453&z=0&sv=iv54...](http://streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?x=191074&y=840453&z=0&sv=iv54+8uf&st=2&pc=iv54+8uf&mapp=map.srf&searchp=ids.srf)

Bear in mind that that map is suppose to be 4cm to a kilometre. On my screen
it's about three times too big.

After growing up with these maps (we were even taught how to read them at
school!), visiting other countries and having to struggle with tourist maps is
deeply painful.

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olzhas
Why people don't use USSR instead of Russia? or Soviet Russia?

