Mapping the Soviet Disunion : * The world: Global events make it almost impossible for teachers, textbook publishers and cartographers to stay on top of events.

Not the CIA, the KGB, the White House nor the Kremlin can predict how the map will look when the Soviet Union gets reshuffled and the Baltic states fully emerge.

And if they don’t know, how can a textbook executive in Austin, Tex.--or a world history teacher in Tarzana, or a cartographer in Washington--predict the future configuration of the map of the world?

“But I have to predict,” Warren Abraham groans. “I’m supposed to decide what to put in these books.”

As marketing manager for social studies texts at Holt Rinehart Winston, he’s been “living a nightmare” since last month’s failed Moscow coup set off declarations of independence by a majority of Soviet republics. It’s all happening too fast, with too many new countries poised to emerge but not yet confirmed. “The reality is: There is no way to publish in 1991 and be current in 1992,” he says--a sentiment echoed at educational publishing houses across the country.

But publish they must. Schedules are set up years in advance; time on printing presses and at binderies is reserved. If a publisher doesn’t take its turn, it misses the chance altogether and goes to the end of the line.

What new countries should be put on the maps? How should the texts read?

With nowhere to turn, Abraham and others are reduced to checking out hot tips from unlikely sources: “I just heard they’re digging three new flag holes in front of the U.N. If I can find out what those flags are, I may have something definite for the books.”

Like his colleagues, Abraham will update his editorial staff until the final deadline. Then he will “take the leap: Either you assume too much and publish an inaccurate book, or you assume nothing and are immediately obsolete.”

It’s better to be obsolete, he says. He prefers to issue supplements that update texts rather than having to correct them.

The National Geographic Society took a different kind of leap. It reunified Germany in its 1990 World Atlas, even before Germany reunified itself.

A difficult decision, but signs were fairly clear when the book went to press in July, 1990, says John Garver, the society’s chief cartographer. (Reunification didn’t formally take place until last October.) And if the atlas had been embarrassingly incorrect, it would have remained that way for nine years--until the next edition.

“It’s horrendous, trying to crystal-ball all this,” Garver explains. And sometimes, timing of world events conspires against him.

The 1990 atlas, for example, “doesn’t have the new Russian configuration,” Garver broods. “It shows the Soviet Union but doesn’t identify all 15 republics separately.”

Even worse cartographic times are ahead, he predicts. Sure, Moldavia has been changed to Moldova for now. But it could conceivably change again down the line. And Yugoslavia “is clearly at a crossroads, very likely to split into sovereign states based on ethnic nationalities--Croats, Slovenes, Serbs,” he says.

Other ethnic groups are likely to rise up, call for independence and start changing names, he adds, because Eastern European events seem to be “igniting dreams of self-determination” in spots most Americans haven’t thought of yet. “Suddenly, people of religious and ethnic backgrounds long latent are exploding in an effort to be identified on the world scene.”

Garver, in charge of an 80-person map-making staff, must plan for all of it.

The real cartographer’s nightmare occurs, he says, when countries change ethnic identity. If the Ukraine gains full independence from Russia, for example, he says, it will change the names of all its rivers, cities and small towns--from Russian to Ukrainian. This is no picnic to contemplate, he adds.

“Where is it all going? What new links will be formed? How do we even define countries, nations and states? It’s getting extremely difficult,” Garver says, especially because there are no good sources to tap. “We deal with embassies of foreign countries and the U.S. State Department” to gather information, he says, “but we’re faster than they are. Map makers have to stay ahead.”

Mapping the airways is also increasingly difficult these days, says Ted Thompson, manager of flight information design at Jeppeson Sanderson Inc. in Englewood, Colo.

His firm produces aeronautical charts and computerized flight information used for navigation by airlines around the globe.

The charts and master data base ordinarily “change by the minute,” he says, as governments give notice of such things as altered runway lengths, new airport openings, realignment of paths between cities.

In the matter of emerging countries and new country or city names, caution and a snail’s pace are routine.

The protocol is to change nothing on charts or data base until the political dust has settled and an incoming government is firmly in power. In the case of Germany, Thompson says, his firm waited until six months after reunification and until the country made formal notification of changes to be made.

“The crucial question is always, ‘Who is in power?’ ” Thompson says. In times of upheaval, that’s often difficult to determine.

“If Yugoslavia’s minister of aviation notified us of a name change today, for example, we would not act on it,” Thompson says. “We’d need further confirmation. He might have a gun to his head or be part of a small splinter group that is not in power; the group in power might not be happy with such a change.”

And that could adversely affect pilots: “As a pilot approaches a city, he calls the control tower, using the name of the city. If the name is wrong, the tower may explain--or it may not respond at all.” The inherent dangers are obvious, Thompson says.

Students at Portola Magnet School in Tarzana have left caution behind, however. “I told them, ‘Let’s gamble; let’s draw the Baltic countries on our maps, because I think Russia’s going to have to let them go,’ ” says Clare Weinstein, who teaches seventh- and ninth-graders. “From the minute school started, all we talked about was the (Soviet) coup and the breakup of the republic,” Weinstein says. “I’ve revised my whole curriculum.”

When the German wall went down, she adds, “we discussed at length how the two peoples would get together, what problems they would have. Everything we talked about came to pass.” The maps her students work with still show two Germanys--”so we just white out the borders and make it into one.”

This has had “tremendous impact” on students, according to Weinstein. But John Maciones, author of college sociology textbooks and a professor at Kenyon College, says he hasn’t seen much reaction: “My students seem vaguely aware of the collapse of the socialist world. I don’t think they perceive it as touching them. When the Gulf War started, they were riveted. But of course, they were directly affected by that.”

He is revising a chapter on group behavior for a new edition of his sociology text, to be published in two years. “I use the failed coup to show how political leaders can miscalculate consequences of their actions, although they have access to tremendous amounts of information,” Maciones says.

But try as he might to keep current, he’s afraid that “anything I say will be outdated even before the reviews come back.”

Travel agents, meanwhile, say Eastern European business, which had soared after the collapse of communism two years ago, has drastically dropped off again. Nick Mokhoff, at the Russian Travel Bureau in Manhattan, says he still deals with Intourist and the Soviet government to book tours, as usual, and tries to “avoid Lithuania entirely until things settle down.” He expects some major changes for travelers to the region, he says, but he can’t predict what form they’ll take.

Steve Rockow, of Airtours in Encino, says his Baltic bookings have suffered, too, since violent confrontations between Lithuanians and Soviets last month. “The Baltic countries were never a primary tourist destination, but Russia itself was,” he says. He predicts that the upheaval eventually could present difficulties in transportation between the new republics and between the republics and the West.

“I doubt whether travel to Moscow or Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) will change; those are international gateways,” Rockow says. “Of course, I could be very wrong. It is all too difficult to predict.”