OVER THERE

If the reunification process of East Germany and West Germany is any indication, it may take eight months before former Soviet states become independent republics on official paper--maps, that is.

“Every other day the name of a city changes,” says Brian Draper, owner of Geographia Map & Travel Bookstore in Burbank. In recent weeks, Moldavia has become Moldova, Byelorussia is Belarus and Leningrad is once again St. Petersburg.

Revised maps cannot arrive too soon. Since the day of the August Soviet coup, Southern California stores specializing in maps and travel books have been deluged with customers.

“There have been far more requests for maps of the Soviet Union,” said John Popowich Jr., salesman at Maps Etc. in Canoga Park. “People will even settle for the old maps, most of which have the republics.” Jarry Capito, salesman at the California Map Center in Santa Monica, estimates that his store has sold as many as 15 more maps a week of the Soviet Union since the attempted coup. “People will buy whatever is available.”

Normally, Popowich says, most of his customers stick to more pedestrian or tourist-oriented purchases--maps of Los Angeles County, the United States, Great Britain and France. During the past two years, however, world crises have broadened Angelenos’ horizons. Maps of Eastern Europe and Germany were hot during the fall of 1989, and earlier this year, stores could not keep maps of the Persian Gulf in stock.

While Soviet maps are being redrawn, Capito has an ironic short-term solution for those people demanding accuracy. “I tell them to get an old atlas from the 1920s if they want a map of the new world order.”