This message was sent to Maps-L by Larry Cruse.----------Johnnie ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- ---------------------------------- Forwarded ---------------------------------- From: Larry Cruse Date: 4/7/95 10:25AM To: Larry Cruse Subject: EPM electronic version, Part 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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