Russian Topo Maps Ios
Zacharie Brodhacker
The cartographic production produced by the USSR during the Cold War period is immense, encompassing all corners of the globe. These topographic maps have a quality and a detail that surprises, especially as some of them are so remote and difficult to access for the technology of the time. Today, we can find countries where the best cartographic base is even Soviet maps.
The IU collection of these (mostly) former Soviet Red Army topographic maps came to us from the duplicate map room of the Library of Congress Map Collection. These captured maps have a great story to tell, that can be traced by the many library stamps they bear. The collection ranges from around 1880-1945 and ranges from Scandinavia to Iran, with most holdings in Eastern Europe and Western Russia.
Before our interactive map was finished, we made do by adapting paper indexes for the web. The original index maps were scanned copies of copies, and were extremely difficult to use (see example below).
The digitization, georeferencing, and cataloging of the Russian Military Topographic Map Collection was supported by a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
In the past, offered a free-of-charge download of Soviet military topographic maps of many areas in the world. Those maps are in the public domain. Now, this site redirects to , a website offering a low-cost archived download of those maps, but not free-of-charge. allows for interactive looking at Soviet military maps, but only for parts of the world and only up to a scale of 1:100.000, even for areas mapped at 1:50.000.
One more source that claims to be 80 GB of data compatible with OziExplorer Use a translator to read the help if needed. If you browse to the source of the downloads you can browse the directory and grab what you need after entering the credentials listed in the help file.
Many thanks for the useful links to old Russian maps.I like these maps a lot and have been collectingthem for quite awhile. I have been recently uploading my own personal raster map collection onto the internet for others to view.
Please feel free to share, link or even embed the following online maps onto your website embedding html code can be found under the map when viewing on the Gigapan.com site. The Gigapan iPad App is also a pretty good viewer. My complete Gigapan map collection is still being updated and current status be reviewed here:
Topographic Maps of Eastern Europe offers a collection of small and large scale historical maps of the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Pale of Jewish Settlement in late Tsarist Russia. Thousands of communities can be found in these images where our ancestors lived and eventually left.
How might we view the Pale of Settlement and the lands to the immediate west in their proper context as we search for the homes of our ancestors and their places of birth and death in previous centuries? Those who emigrated from this region left countries with boundaries completely different than those we see today. World War I and the Russian Revolution caused these boundaries to change radically after about a century of stability. Within this context here are thousands of maps giving various views of the land from late eighteenth through the early twentieth century. Small scale atlases and gubernia maps reveal a vast area conquered and re-divided by the leaders of Prussia, Austria, and Russia at the end of the eighteenth century. Lands were further divided after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the resulting borders would remain, albeit with minor shifts, until the dissolution of the Pale in 1917.
The large scale topographic series included here show us communities of all sizes down to the smallest villages putting to rest the notion that some were too small to be found on maps. Even evidence of Jewish presence is given by specific symbols on many of the maps. Jewish cemeteries are ubiquitous on many Russian topographic sections. Additionally, the maps show us national, provincial and administrative boundaries that limited Jewish residence and formed a basis for the gathering of records, collecting taxes and drafting military conscripts. Within these boundaries legislation specifically designed to limit the rights and freedoms of Jews would bear profoundly on their lives. Military conscription, pogroms, crowding, poverty and expulsions all combined to motivate massive migration and political movements within and out of Eastern Europe.
While on-line encyclopedias linked here provide a rich source of information on the Jewish population of these regions, their migrations, involvement in farming and emigration, Yizkor Books, the JewishGen Gazetteer , and The Virtual Shetl further expand possibilities for exploration. Other writings are included by special permission in the ARTICLES section relevant to these regions and periods.
People worldwide are searching for their origins and maps are an important tool in that search. Throughout the U.S. and Europe there are libraries and archives that contain thousands of historical maps useful to genealogists and historians. Maps from earlier centuries stored around the world can now be seen with a click. This website may offer surprising discoveries for those who are searching by providing a central gathering point of historical geographic information. We are indebted to the collections around the world and the work of others whose websites and articles are linked here, joining with the maps to form a practical set of research and learning tools. The nature of Jewish communities, of shtetlech and their relation to the changing national boundaries are all questions which Topographic Maps of Eastern Europe can address, giving viewers a clearer sense of place as they search for the homes of their ancestors and ponder life in the shtetl.
The library receives current USGS maps through the Depository program and retains them over time. All states other than Indiana are located at the Auxiliary Library Facility (ALF). For immediate access to USGS Topographic maps, see TopoView.
The Africa Index Map Project is an ongoing effort to create index maps for IU's collection of topographic map series covering the African continent. View the interactive index map to see which sheets are held at IU. This list is not comprehensive.
Topographic maps in general depict the horizontal and vertical locations of natural and man-made (cultural) features. Both topographic and physical maps can denote differences in elevation, but physical maps emphasize the surface features of the land or floor of the ocean without man-made features, while topographic maps generally include cultural features and indicate their horizontal and vertical locations, as well as those of natural features. While both can represent changes in elevation through shaded tinting, spot heights, and contour lines, we generally associate the last two cartographic devices with topographic maps.
Topographic maps represent a very broad genre of materials, and, depending on their scale, can provide coverage at national, regional, provincial, and local levels. Those that are cataloged nonetheless can be located on the Library of Congress online catalog under general search terms as in the following examples: "Russia maps topographic"; or "Siberia Eastern Russia maps topographic"; or "Russia Federation Arctic regions maps"; "Caucasus South topographic maps"; or "Moscow Russia oblast maps topographic"; or "Tver Region Russia maps topographic."
The bulk of topographic maps of Russia and the former Soviet Union are parts of series or sets, which can range anywhere from two to several thousand sheets. Topographic maps within sets by and large are compiled and published by a single entity and its successors; tend to be issued at the same scale; generally are limited to a specific time frame of publication; usually include a uniform set of natural and cultural features; and are arranged according to some uniform alpha-numeric system devised or utilized by the creating authority. In levels of coverage they can range from small scale, i.e. 1:500,000, to medium scale, i.e. 1:100,000, or large scale, i.e. 1:2,000. Coverage can be at the national, regional, provincial, or municipal levels. About half of the sets of topographic maps of Russia are accompanied by graphic or numerical indexes that are necessary in identifying available coverage.
In theory, all sets of topographic maps of Russia in the Library of Congress are cataloged, and, thus, are listed and identified on the Library of Congress online catalog. On the other hand, many sets have older, unverified catalog records, and are not easily retrieved from a catalog search. Furthermore, catalog records do not necessarily identify the sheets available within any given set. Potentially successful searches of the LC online catalog for a sets of topographic maps of Russia, nevertheless, are possible, and can take a variety of forms, depending on the search strategy. An example may help.
The Library holds a set of topographic maps of western Imperial Russia compiled and published in the early part of the twentieth century at 1:100,000 scale by the Prussian State Survey Department. The set is formally titled Karte des westlichen Russlands, and covers what are now the Baltics and parts of Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine. The LCCN permalink leads us directly to the record. Currently a graphic index identifying the full contents of the set is available only in the division by either a member of the reference staff or a patron consulting it onsite. Without the full title or permalink, one, nevertheless, could still identify the set on the Library's online catalog by employing a quick search for the terms that include the area of coverage and the name the publisher (if known), such as in "Russia western maps Landesaufnahme Prussia." Or, one could browse the catalog for the subject term "Russia, western maps." Or, one could perform a keyword search, expanded to include all categories, for the term "Russia western maps 1:100,000." The last two search options enable researchers to limit by location in the Library to "Geography & Map," which restricts all searches to cartographic materials.
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