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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
