[Closed] Map fetishists assemble - The story of the soviet map makers

I've seen the NATO military maps (all in Russian) used for the Afghanistan wars. Quite funny how they were all stamped NATO SECRET, when you could buy them online from a Russian map seller......

Bloody hell there's one of Halifax and Sowerby Bridge!

It would be great to get one of my local area - would look good on the wall..

Hunters Lodge Inn ,in Priddy has a one inch map of the area in Russian on the wall

Yeah I'd like a copy of the local one. It's on a list but I can't see where you would get hold of it. The article is a good read too BTW, thanks.

Managed to buy a copy of the most local one as a file from geospatial.com - need to get it printed somewhere. Shame it doesn't have Hebden on it but it's still pretty cool.

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The detail on it when you zoom in is pretty incredible (the big text says Sowerby Bridge in Russian!):

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They're pretty incredible things! Impressive clarity in the urban area too.

grum - how did you find the right product? I can't seem to see it

nm... found it

grum, did you pay for the raster or is there a way of seeing a preview?

Can't seem to see a preview either. I'd be reluctant to spend that much without seeing it though.

Is that the 1:25k city plan grum?

Edit: The Newcastle (where I'm based) city plan seems a good deal bigger than the rest, but the same price, so good value. Unless the paper version is printed the same size.

Same one I was after, if you find it then let me know!

There was a preview for mine though I can't seem to see it now. Mine is the 1:10,000.

I paid for the raster - shipping was another $55 and I couldn't be arsed with potential hassles with customs/import duties etc.

Same one I was after, if you find it then let me know!

Will do.

Ah, Halifax is 10k whereas Newcastle is 25k, hence bigger map.

Hadn't thought about shipping and import duty. $50 is a lot for a raster image - how big are you planning to print it? $1500 for the vector though 😯

Not sure yet. I normally get photo prints done here - http://dscolour.photokio.sk/category/135-fuji-lustre-prints-c-type

They've got an offer on 30"x 20" prints for £6.99 but I dunno if that's big enough (or if that's the best type of printing for maps). It's not going to be cheap all told (assuming I get it framed or something) but something quite interesting and different for the wall.

Oooh - two of my favourite things - Soviet-era stuff and maps!

My dads house who's also a map fan (and where I grew up) is about 100m off the edge of one of the maps, so that's Christmas sorted.

Keen to hear of people's experience with shipping or printing out the vectors.

East View have some pretty fun old maps, well worth rummaging around the site. Have used the russian maps on a few overseas projects where no other basemapping is available.

Keen to hear of people's experience with shipping or printing out the vectors

I meant rasters - I ain't that rich or I'd buy myself a MiG 21 instead.

Thanks for posting. That's my sister's xmas present sorted (she's a Russian history lecturer) 😀

This is a great thread. Thanks lemonysam. 🙂

A few more [url= http://loadmap.net/en ]here[/url], but not great detail.

Would love one of the south downs if anyone finds a link?

My work has a treasure trove of 60s &70s era OS maps of Scotland in the emergency room, quite interesting watching planned motorways and such pop up over the years. Those soviet maps look interesting, never have figured out what will wallpaper my study, might have found something...

Mapstor has some Soviet maps for download. Only smaller scale for most of the UK, unfortunately, but it's only $1 for 1:500000 central and southern Scotland!

Here's Peebles, Glentress and Innerleithen:

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Must be going blindblind, anyone got a link to the map search (probably me just being dim)

Not Soviet, but I've just found this cool website showing historical OS maps:

http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/maps/

Stirling is shown here: http://tinyurl.com/nubncas
The detail and scanned quality and is superb.

(You can also see old maps of Scotland here: http://maps.nls.uk/ )

mikewsmith - Are these the maps you are looking for:

[url= https://mapstor.com/map-sets/country-maps/great-britain.html ]https://mapstor.com/map-sets/country-maps/great-britain.html[/url]

mikewsmith - the city plan maps are [url= http://geospatial.com/products/series/topographic-maps/soviet-military-city-plans-7/ ]here[/url] and the 1:50ks are [url= http://geospatial.com/products/series/topographic-maps/soviet-military-scale-1-50000-topographic-maps-5/ ]here[/url]. Australia don't seem well represented though if I remember your location right.

edit: there's [url= http://geospatial.com/products/series/topographic-maps/soviet-military-scale-1-500000-topographic-maps-2/ ]1:500ks[/url] and a few city plans.

found a 1:50k that very nearly covers my house. the eastern edge dissects our village.
do wonder where and how they source the data. i'm sure they must use something like OS or barts or something. certainly some local features are missing from the soviet map that either they didn't know about, or didn't care about.
but now I need to do some more research regarding one of those semi-secret hush-hush gas/oil pipelines that the government don't tell people about, to keep fuel flowing for transport/aviation. either they were wrong, or there's a 2nd pipeline, or the real one was more secret and the one built across my friends farm was a bluff.

Think in that article it says they nicked OS map data then used other sources (such as spies on the ground) to add stuff in. There's quite a few details like individual houses/buildings in urban areas and things like river depth and flow speed that don't appear on OS maps - they must have had loads of agents!

we still do.....

Are the 1:10k city maps of a sufficient scale to state street names? That's the real attraction.

I'm looking at Edinburgh by the way.

That snippet of the sowerby bridge one up there seems to. Course it could all be the russian for soup for all I know.

According to my quick look at a Russian alphabet it translates as Soyerbi Bridz (with an accent on the z that makes it a zh kind of sound. And Halifax appears to be Galifaks for some reason - don't think they've got a h.

we still do.....

Someone wasn't paying attention to the 'secret' bit of secret agent training. 🙂

Soviet City Maps

We love the great interest from this audience regarding our Soviet City Maps as seen in Wired magazine. http://singletrackmag.com/…/map-fetishists-assemble-the-s…. Contact us to see if we have your city!

http://geospatial.com/products/series/topographic-maps/soviet-military-city-plans-7/

Someone wasn't paying attention to the 'secret' bit of secret agent training.

Kim Philby pretty much told people he was a Spy buy that didn't stop him carrying on for another 20 years at MI6!

Living in Cambridge, most of my neighbours are Soviet sleeper agents and/or top brass in MI5 / MI6. We don't bother with all the cloak and dagger pretence any more and just speak Russian at dinner parties.

Nearest place to me that's covered is Bath, followed by Bristol; I'm slightly surprised that Corsham isn't, considering the complex of military sites and the huge Copenacre storage depot on the outskirts.
I quite like the idea of having a raster of Bath, Bristol, on the other hand, is covered by four, so that's out.

I've got a 1:100k of Manchester (N-30-92) hanging in our downstairs loo in Cambridge - my Dad bought it very early 90's I think, and I kept it as it covers where I was born and raised. He was a proper map geek - guessing these things were pretty hard to come by back then.

?????? ????? Footflaps - we must have met at those dinner parties 😉

Got the raster from Geospatial but in the process found these for you Mancs (from the uni archives)

http://enriqueta.man.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/view/search?q=Creator=%22Military%20Topographic%20Directorate%20%28VTU%29%22

Got my print of the Halifax map if anyone's interested in seeing it - looks pretty cool (not the world's greatest pictures of it but it's very clear/sharp).

I got it from supersizeprints.co.uk - 96x90cm and it cost £26.47 including delivery - satin finish. Still need to get it framed.

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Grum - that's fab.
Sadly we're just off the southern edge otherwise I'd get one.

We're not on it either which is a shame but I still thought it would a nice thing of local interest. Got quite a few mates from round Halifax/Sowerby/Luddenden etc.

I might sell you the raster for a nicely discounted price if you like 😉

Yeah I know I don't own the copyright - but I think ownership of the copyright is fairly tenuous given that the Russians apparently stole some of the OS map data in the first place, and these companies selling the maps now bought them on the black market from dodgy ex-soviet military sources.

Thanks Grum, great pics! I'll have a look at the printing place.

I found this too http://www.i2ocr.com/free-online-russian-ocr which will allow you to screen capture the body of text, save as a jpeg, upload and get it translated. It's not generic cartographic info but an analysis of the area. There's stuff about Huddersfield I never new.

Have you got any green/turquoise items on the Halifax map? They're of strategic or military importance - me? Crosland Moor Airfield (flat piece of grass).

Have you got any green/turquoise items on the Halifax map? They're of strategic or military importance - me? Crosland Moor Airfield (flat piece of grass).

On the Edinburgh map Redford Barracks is definitely blue, but strangely Dreghorn Barracks is brown (residential/commercial?). Elsewhere on the map, the blue and the black (industrial) are near indistinguishable. Indeed I think I might be just imagining a difference. The old Ferranti offices (defence electronics) at Crew Toll I think looks blue but I'm not sure.

Can anyone translate the map key? What do the numbers next to the buildings refer to?

So you need to buy the Raster file(whatever that is?) and send it to the printer of your choice ie Supersizeprint.co.uk? If that's correct it'll be $49.99 (£33) then £27 someone quoted above?

[i]Think in that article it says they nicked OS map data then used other sources [/i]

I've read in other articles that the maps appear to have been made from scratch (despite OS claims otherwise) as they appear to have made errors such as mistaking pipe laying excavation for building a new road, something you'd only get wrong from an aerial view.

Which makes the whole thing even more fascinating

I found this key for the Russian military maps of London - not sure if it applies to all them:

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Have you got any green/turquoise items on the Halifax map? They're of strategic or military importance - me? Crosland Moor Airfield (flat piece of grass).

Not that I've seen so far but I haven't examined all of it yet.

So you need to buy the Raster file(whatever that is?) and send it to the printer of your choice ie Supersizeprint.co.uk? If that's correct it'll be $49.99 (£33) then £27 someone quoted above?

Yeah it's not a cheap do! There may well be cheaper places to get it printed and mine is pretty big (maybe too big).

I've read in other articles that the maps appear to have been made from scratch (despite OS claims otherwise) as they appear to have made mistakes such as mistaking pipe laying excavation for building a new road, something you'd only get wrong from an aerial view.

Which makes the whole thing even more fascinating

That is interesting - so what's the theory there, that they had planes flying overhead? They wouldn't have had satellites with sufficient detail surely?

Numbers on the map correspond to the list of numbered items in the body of the text where it says ???????? ?????? ???????? (LIST OF SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS). My map is one of two that are adjacent and the description and numbering also references items on the other sheet.

yeah I think so, I'm pretty sure that they claim to have made them entirely from satellite images, aerial photos and agents. They certainly have different info from OS.

I think OS build in errors to their maps as well though don't they? so perhaps they've checked and can confirm copyright.

who knows? ❓

Have you got any green/turquoise items on the Halifax map? They're of strategic or military importance - me? Crosland Moor Airfield (flat piece of grass).

Just looking at this snippet of the Newcastle map. Some of the strategic importance things are obvious - the barracks, the parsons plant, Benton Park. I'm struggling to understand the importance of Scallini's in Jesmond or the fruit and veg shop off Ashburton road in Gosforth.

[url= http://images.jomidav.com/sovietmaps/Newcastle.jp g" target="_blank">http://images.jomidav.com/sovietmaps/Newcastle.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

edit: I'm also a bit puzzeld by why the centre for life site is marked as being a government building. I think at the time of that map it was still the cattle market.

I'm struggling to understand the importance of...

That's the mystique - genuine mistakes or did they know something else? Not all secret bases look like Menwith Hill. My guess is Shearer was a sleeper agent and St James is on top of massive underground cavern full of tanks.

Menwith Hill yesterday
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St James is on top of massive underground cavern full of tanks.

Well there is the underground car park... Makes you think!

There is an App now too; https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atlogis.sovietmaps.free