The role of soviet maps in formation the spatial background in contemporary Russians
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Gavrilova, S.
1OXFROD UNIVERSITY Email: gavrilova.sofia@gmail.com
Abstract
The cotemporary Russian understanding of space and national identity were formed in Soviet academia and then sharped with the raise of geopolitical studies and national identity questions after the transition. There are several key factors that played a crucial role in the forming the geographical imagination of Soviet people and build a basis to the nowadays space identity. Taking in consideration the size of Russia and the bad transport infrastructure, Soviet and Russian people get used to gain their visual images of spaces form different types of cultural products. Among other there were the soviet maps and important fact of their specific visuality. All the maps in Soviet union can be divided in three large groups: the propaganda maps, which were seen by a wide audience, scientific maps with the restricted access, and the maps were used to teach soviet geography school in different levels. The goal of this work is to sum up the influence of the maps, which could be seen by the wide audience on the geography imagination of the soviet people. The propaganda maps are the most simple for the analysis – their goal was to demonstrate the external enemy and to highlight the soviet success in industrialization and agriculture. The different merge of art and science discourse was used for that and the criteria of geometric accuracy can’t be applied for that. Many scientific maps had restricted access and were used for internal goals only. The maps for schools and higher education had a very specific visual language and the information given on them was also very much influenced by the state policy. Furthermore these maps were not aiming to present the geography itself (location of hydrological objects, cities or transport lines) but very much as propaganda maps to highlight the success of soviet economy and agriculture. The very important role in shaping the geographical imagination upon country the legend had played. The way geographical objects were classified and put into different categories influenced the understanding of the basic components, such as “landscape”, “forest”, “city” and so one. Although the critical and cultural approach to the cartography became very common in contemporary cartography studies it was rarely applied to the soviet cartography and maps. The critical attitude to soviet cartography and the academy that produced it was hardly reached in the Russian cartographical tradition and theory. In other words, the contemporary cartography school in Russian hasn’t changed that much and hasn’t reflex the soviet cartography and it’s role in society. So after the cultural shock that appear in the period of transition there was no critical approach to the representation of territories in Soviet past and to shift to new one in present.
Keywords
soviet cartography; national identity; geographical imagination