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| 1960 / matte hardcover |
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| 1967 / matte hardcover |
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| 1970 / textured hardcover |
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| 1971 / textured flexible hardcover |
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| 1974 / textured hardcover |
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| 1974 / textured hardcover |
As you can see, there were many different designs (this is only a small sampling) with at least 9 known covers (likely a few others exist) for 1974 alone. The interiors change also, as the actual maps are redesigned, but there are also two different internal layouts. As this is predominantly a typewriter blog, I won't go into too much nerdy detail at first but if anybody else is curious I could certainly examine one of these atlases in detail and compare it to others.
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| 1974 / glossy hardcover |
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| 1974 / glossy hardcover |
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| 1974 / textured hardcover |
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| 1974 / textured hardcover |
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| 1979 / textured hardcover |
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| 1979 / vinyl softcover |
It's interesting to see the incredible variety of atlases produced from the one central organization. I am aware of at least 6 binding types. Matte hardcover, textured hardcover, textured flexible hardcover, glossy hardcover, glossy softcover, and vinyl softcover. It's also fascinating to see the different styles of graphic design that prevailed in the Soviet Union over 32 years. I find that, for the most part, they all were designed in very good taste, if at first a little strange to our western eyes. (I know I have readers from more than just the west, but I think I could say the vast majority of responsive readers are located in western cultures.) Their style is very "graphic"—simple and striking.
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| 1982 / glossy softcover |
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| 1984 / textured flexible hardcover |
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| 1991 / glossy hardcover |
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| 1991 / glossy hardcover |
You can see our
Atlas of Automobile Roads USSR collection in its entirety on my
Roads & Maps website. That is, of course, constantly changing and is in a bit of a state of disrepair as my descriptions of atlases are a bit lacking at this point. Cover and map scans, though, are very up-to-date.
These eastern European road atlases aren't really documented much at all, as far as I know. There certainly is no good source for information about them in English. I'm striving to create a good resource on my website. At this point, we own approximately one-fifth of the known cover variations of the
Atlas of Automobile Roads USSR / Атлас автомобильных дорог СССР / Atlas Avtomobilnikh Dorog SSSR. (There are 90 known variations made from 1959 to 1991, including same covers with different publication years, not 60 as I said in the typecast.)
Sent from my travelling Olivetti Lettera 22
The graphics may have been centralised, but I wonder if the printing and binding were sourced locally from different printers and using different specs. Sort of makes sense if you imagine the geographical spread.
ReplyDeleteI've considered that because it does make sense, but they all distinctly state Moscow as the location of printing. They -might- have just said that no matter where it was printed, but it doesn't seem like it would be important enough to lie about.
DeletePS: You might enjoy this on Letterology.
ReplyDeleteI saw that and thought that now would be a good time to enact my own plans. :)
DeleteGreat concept for a collection.
ReplyDeleteVery neat - love your maps site! I dunno if it fits the "road map" theme, but I could send you high-res scans I made of a 1938 "tourist attractions" map of Arizona drawn by cartoonist Reg Manning:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reg_Manning
Here's a low-res scan of the map from raremaps.com:
http://www.raremaps.com/maps/medium/31810.jpg
let me know if it's something that you might want to include. (:
Glad that you like it. :)
DeleteWell, my maps website is for our two combined collections only.
Very nice collection.
ReplyDeleteReally cool! Thanks for sharing that.
ReplyDeleteVery simple and direct graphics, indeed. I've still got a few maps from that period, and most show people, like a couple enjoying an outing. Interesting that the soviet maps hardly provide a glimpse of the human form. I get the feeling that they have been subsumed into the state, loosing all their identity. Or perhaps our own propaganda of the era still lingers with me. Or I need more of my morning coffee.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have a map collection, although an inadvertent one. I just can't throw them out. National Geographic, road maps, USGS topos. Your fine post is going to cause me a few sneezes as I am compelled now to dig through them today, looking for gems.
Both sides are guilty of some pretty severe propaganda against their enemy. It's surprising what you find out when you look at both sides objectively. (Of course it's sometimes hard to find information in English that isn't already tilted against the Soviet Union!) It wasn't paradise and it wasn't hell, just like the US. Both sides had positive and negative aspects. If it wasn't for the Communists, the people living in what was the Soviet Union would have been much worse off than they were during the 20th century.
DeletePersonal identity is a tricky topic. One could say the same about the restrictive social culture of the 1950s in the United States...of course not with the State particularly as the enemy. It was definitely a problem in the USSR though.
Mapsmapsmapsmaps have fun!