This message was sent to Maps-L by Larry Cruse.----------Johnnie
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From: Larry Cruse
Date: 4/7/95 10:25AM
To: Larry Cruse
Subject: EPM electronic version, Part 2
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New Emphasis on Cartographic Information at East View
East View Publications has recently undertaken some major changes in its
internal organization. First and foremost is a major initiative in the
field of cartographic information from the countries of the former USSR.
This initiative is being led by James Beale, formerly head of EVP's
Periodicals Division, and will steadily unfold in the coming weeks and
months. The Eurasian Press Monitor will be a primary source for information
about EVP's developing cartographic activities, and I encourage all those
interested in this area to pay close attention.
I. Background: Cartography in Russia/USSR
The production and distribution of maps, atlases and related publications
throughout the history of Russia, and especially during its Soviet period,
has been surrounded by delicate national security questions. Indeed, just
days ago Russian customs officials arrested a pair of Estonians trying to
smuggle out large-scale and still-secret topographic maps of Russian
territory.1 As a whole, Russia still lags significantly behind Western
countries in making their best and most detailed maps openly available to
the public. However some major breakthroughs have taken place in the last
two years with respect to public access to high-quality Russian maps of
various kinds.
Until very recently Russian/Soviet maps evoked the same kind of sniggers and
guffaws that products marked "Made in Japan" did 25 or 30 years ago. The
conventional wisdom was that maps produced during the Soviet period were
distorted or woefully incomplete, especially to the extent that they
concerned the territory of the Soviet Union itself. While that may have
been true for many of the mediocre publications distributed officially
through "Soiuzkarta," "Mezhkniga," and similar state-monopoly distributors,
the real situation was quite different. In fact, Soviet cartography, like
so many other sensitive areas of information and publishing, could well be
depicted as an iceberg--a tiny and relatively unimpressive portion of which
could be seen, and a huge portion which remained hidden in secrecy. With
many secrecy restrictions recently lifted, we are now finally learning that
Soviet cartography had achieved colossal feats, especially in the postwar
period, and in many ways dramatically exceeded the cartographic
accomplishments of the West.
To date the sources of these newly-available maps have been of two main
types: official and non-official. The latter have actually been the
largest source of Soviet military-edition topographic maps, and in the
majority of cases are connected with shadowy distributors in the Baltic
states or Eastern Europe. These distributors acquired their inventories
from the various retreating Russian army units who sold, in addition to
maps, Soviet army uniforms, watches, hats, and even the occasional
Kalashnikov rifle or worse.
Official sources, however, have the advantage of being in constant touch
with the producers of Russian maps. This is very important, especially to
the extent that maps increasingly are acquired by corporations for various
business purposes. Topographic maps in particular are in a state of
constant change, especially in urban areas, and are revised every five years
or so. Consequently continuing access through official channels is critical
to ensuring the ability to provide the most up-to-date maps. East View
approaches the question precisely this way, and is the first Western company
to establish official working relationships with a broad spectrum of map
producers in Russia.
II. General trends in cartographic information
What is happening with maps and other forms of cartographic information
today, and why should this be an important area of activity for East View?
The first point to consider is the political. One of the most popular kind
of maps is the political-administrative map, which highlights the borders of
countries and their subunits. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989,
this genre of map has been in an unprecedented state of flux as the Soviet
empire has crumbled and numerous new states have been born. Invariably, one
of the first acts of a new state is to issue a map or maps illustrating its
borders and internal regions. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union was
also accompanied by changes in the names of regions, cities, streets and a
move away from the Russian language and the Cyrillic alphabet, the
publication of new maps has been even more noteworthy and complex.
A second point is also political, in a sense. To the degree that the
collapse of the closed communist societies of the former Soviet bloc was
accelerated by the necessary move toward a more open model of society, a
corollary of open societies--less secrecy--dramatically affected
cartography. Formerly closed regions were opened up to travel. Formerly
secret maps were declassified. Accurate and complete street maps suddenly
appeared. Scales which were almost never depicted openly--including
1:200,000 scales and larger--now became the norm. And new types of maps
with new types of information--ranging from maps showing the radiation
consequences of the Chernobyl and Kyshtym disasters to valuable mineral
deposits throughout Siberia--began to be openly published for the first
time. In short, the true proportions of the massive iceberg of Soviet
cartography began to be revealed.
Commercial influences have also begun to be felt. Prior to just a few
years ago, there was no commercial activity in maps and map products to
speak of, especially on a worldwide scale. To be sure, there was some trade
in the aforementioned political-administrative maps and occasional
small-scale specialty maps through Soviet monopoly vendors, but this was as
poorly managed as it was meager. More often, the best non-secret maps were
acquired on an exchange basis by Western governmental or academic experts,
but such acquisitions were often possible only via the rare organized trip
or conference. Now, the situation has changed completely and a
mini-industry has grown up overnight. Where there was no trade in
large-scale topographic maps, now a number of industries and governmental
organizations are intensely acquiring them for use in telecommunications,
energy, infrastructure, environmental and other applications. Where there
was no trade in geological maps, now oil and gas firms, mining companies,
and others are drawn to them as one-sixth of the Earth's surface is opened
up to commercial mineral exploitation. The same can be said for other types
of cartographic information from the former Soviet Union.
Hand-in-hand with commercial advances has come a technological revolution in
the presentation of cartographic information: the influence of the personal
computer and appropriate software. The latter, in the form of geographic
information systems (GIS), has tremendously affected cartography worldwide.
Today, virtually no locality in the United States is untouched: municipal
land registers and property-tax assessments are routinely implemented with
GIS; voting patterns and legislative redistricting are discerned and
recreated; land-use and environmental issues are also tracked. The GIS
revolution is now hitting Russia (Ukraine and other CIS states are not far
behind), and the effects will be no less profound. Electronic maps which
describe every single building in Moscow have now been completed and are
commercially available, and work on other major Russian cities progresses
each day. In time, the monitoring of Russia's privatization's progress,
population censuses, local political tendencies, agricultural harvests,
mineral extraction and reserves, and much more, will be routinely depicted
with GIS.
Finally, a word must be mentioned about military aspects. Like so much else
with modern technology, advancements in cartographic information pose a very
real "dual-use" question. The aforementioned GIS software, when combined
with the appropriate global-positional system (GPS) technology, is the
essence of cruise missile pinpoint accuracy. It is no accident that most
Soviet cartographic achievements were accomplished for military purposes,
nor is it coincidental that these same military authorities now look
jaundicedly upon releasing the fruits of their work to Western commercial
interests and , inevitably, to other entities perhaps less interested in
commerce. Here at East View we face these challenges constantly (and not
just in cartographic information). Ultimately, we are confident that the
restrictions on the dissemination of detailed cartographic information will
be seen as obsolete as those which were once imposed on personal computers:
people have quickly forgotten that just ten years ago senior
Reagan-Administration officials caused a minor sensation during
congressional testimony when they "demonstrated" how then-leading personal
computer technology in the form of the IBM PC/AT could be used to program a
nuclear missile attack and therefore should be kept out of the hands of
hostile powers. To be sure, terrorists or rogue governments require various
technologies and data to implement their evil ends. Open societies like the
United States and many other Western countries have long wrestled with such
dual-use commercial issues; they have come down on the side of free commerce
when any one of three situations can be shown to exist: the technology or
data in question has overwhelming beneficial aspects; its distribution is in
any event uncontrollable; or the enemy against which the sanctions were
targeted disappears. East View is confident that freedom of commerce for
Russian cartographic innovations and information will eventually be the
rule, since essentially all three of these reasons can be demonstrated to
exist quite persuasively and often simultaneously.
III. Current EVP activities
At present East View's cartographic publications may be divided roughly into
the following areas:
Political-administrative maps
Popular for all types of users, these maps depict current borders and names
of countries, regions, and sub-regions. Since maps of such kinds are often
really nothing more than the political opinions of various powers, users are
always cautioned to consider the publisher of any particular map. East View
is proud to keep a large in-stock supply of the most interesting post-USSR
political maps, including in various exotic vernacular languages. In most
cases we acquire each map locally in the city or country in which it was
originally published. (It is worthwhile to note that the Armenian map of
Nagorno-Karabakh differs dramatically from the Azeri version, and not just
in spelling.)
Other general maps and atlases
East View also stock a large variety of tourist-type maps and travel
atlases, including city plans for dozens of important destinations across
the former USSR. We encourage people to purchase these items ahead of time,
prior to their departure, since despite the wonders of privatization in the
former USSR local and efficient map distribution is still rather spotty.
Topographic sheets
Already discussed much above, EVP sells such maps in two basic ways: first,
and most popularly, as complete sets of a particular country or region; and
second, on the basis of individual sheets. In either case it is necessary
to make use of a standard map index (arranged in quadrangles defined by
global coordinates) which uniquely locates any particular map. The sale of
individual topographic sheets according to customer desire is purely an East
View innovation with respect to Russian topographic maps. No other vendors
in the world offer such a pick-and-choose option.
Geological maps
With respect to the territory of the former Soviet Union, geological and
related maps are very similar to topographic maps in terms of their
coordinates and organization--at least as concerns the basic scales of
1:1,000,000 and 1:200,000. This has been another area of unique discovery
on the part of East View Publications: prior to our activity with this
genre of maps literally no one in the West to our knowledge understood the
extent of Soviet geological mapping. In fact there are numerous kinds of
geological maps, several of which are published in huge series. In
addition, there is a massive collection of books or "explanatory notes"
written to correspond to various map series, whereby one book relates to one
or several maps covering a single area. These books in turn cite dozens,
sometimes hundreds of detailed geological studies about a particular region.
For Western geologists, commercial or academic, this represents a massive
information windfall.
Nautical charts
An integral part of the Soviet Union's superpower status was played by the
Soviet navy, which sailed the world's seas for decades. Accordingly, the
Soviet navy undertook detailed hydrographic and bathymetric analyses of the
world's oceans, seas, coastlines and other waterways. In many cases, Soviet
nautical charts, now declassified, represent the best available charts for
the coastal waters of countries such as China, North Korea, and Libya, not
the mention the Soviet Arctic and Pacific coasts and their portions of the
Baltic, Black and Caspian seas.
Digital/electronic products
The Russians are increasingly digitizing their maps in the form of Western
GIS packages such as Arc/Info and even in a few home-grown software packages
which the Russians claim are just as effective. Several interactive
electronic versions of a Moscow city map exist, and more and more
large-scale Russia-wide GIS products are becoming available, including in
oil/gas infrastructure and mineral resources.
Other map products
Other forms of cartographic information, including archival and unpublished
maps, rare and formerly classified atlases, environmental and public health
maps, and so on are available from East View. Potential customers are urged
to inquire. Although East View does not currently work in the area of
photogrammetric information, including aerial photography or satellite
imagery, we may be able to answer various questions, since the Russians have
loosened secrecy restrictions in these key areas as well.
IV. EVP's goals for the future
East View's goals with respect to Russian cartographic publications are
clear: we aim to become the worldwide leader in discovering and
distributing these outstanding resources, all the while providing our
outstanding and knowledgeable customer support, for fair and reasonable
prices. In particular we are enthusiastic about the commercial
possibilities for topographic sheets, geological maps, nautical charts, and
digital products. As well, we will aim to tailor our services to include
supply of even individual large-scale maps, and not force customers to
choose between buying a huge set of unnecessary maps or walking away
discouraged with nothing.
Commercial success in distribution--not production for secret purposes--will
be the best guarantee of a thriving Russian cartographic industry--just as
with the publication of newspapers, journals or books. The sources and
producers of Russian informational products of all kinds have always had an
important stake in East View's successes, and maps will be no different.
Thus we consider our suppliers to be just as important as our customers.
The relationship is truly symbiotic.
As president of East View, I look forward to expanding upon our pioneering
steps in the distribution of cartographic information from Russian and
other countries of the former USSR. This effort will be led by James Beale,
formerly of East View's Periodicals Department, who now assumes the position
of Director, Department of Cartographic Publications. I encourage all
potential customers to be in direct contact with James and his staff,
including Shannon Birge.
Kent D. Lee
President
2 April 1995
1 Moskovskie novosti, N.20, 19-26 March 1995, p. 4.
James Beale
East View Publications EAST VIEW PUBLICATIONS
3020 HARBOR LANE N
[log in to unmask] MINNEAPOLIS MN 55447
telephone 612-550-0962
fax 612-559-2931
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