New Direction for Glasnost : Soviets Ending Intentional Distortion of Their Maps

The Soviet Union’s chief cartographer disclosed today the latest new direction of glasnost-- an end to the intentional distortion of maps.

V. Yashchenko told the government newspaper Izvestia that the lifting of state secrecy directives in force since the 1930s has allowed cartographers to draft new, accurate maps.

“We have received masses of complaints,” said Yashchenko, who heads the government’s Main Administration of Geodesy and Cartography. “People could not recognize their motherland on the map. Tourists tried in vain to figure out where they were.”

Yashchenko admitted that nearly all Soviet maps had been distorted since dictator Josef Stalin gave responsibility for map making to the NKVD secret police in the late 1930s.

“Almost everything was changed: Roads and rivers were shifted, city districts were switched about, streets and buildings were depicted inaccurately,” he said.

“For example, on the tourist map of Moscow, only the contours of the capital are even partially correct.”

He said a full range of maps of different scales and a new atlas will be ready by 1990, adding that cartographers have also prepared a 240,000-page, high-accuracy map of the entire country for professional use.

The Kremlin’s glasnost (openness) campaign has helped Soviet citizens find their way through a thicket of previously banned topics, but Yashchenko’s remarks were the first sign that they could soon find their way on the streets.