Mapping the Soviet: Cartography, Culture and Power from Lenin to Stalin, 1917-53

The Soviet regime attributed huge importance to geographical space as a factor which could make or break the post-revolutionary state and accordingly to the construction and control of spatial knowledge and representation. Maps played a crucial role in affirming and propagating the communist worldview: 'the map is almost as close to becoming the centre of the new Russian iconic cult as Lenin's portrait', noted a foreign visitor to Moscow in 1926. Equally, the regime recognized the importance of accurate surveys and maps for state-building, strategic planning and economic development. Soviet cartography bifurcated in two directions: one concerned with spatial 'myth-making', the other with constructing a 'scientific' account of space.

Despite their 'iconic' status, Soviet maps have not yet attracted significant attention in historical research. This project offers the first integrated analysis of the political, social, economic, cultural and aesthetic dimensions of Soviet cartography. As well as strengthening scholarly understanding of Soviet history, it will contribute to a better appreciation of the role of map-making - understood as both a scientific-technical and socio-cultural practice - and of maps in the modern world. Its main academic output will be a monograph. I also aim to use my research to enhance wider public understanding of 20th century cartography and of what we can learn from maps about the science-culture nexus that moulds our modern reality. To this end, I shall seek to build on earlier collaborations with the British Library to organise an exhibition drawing on their vast map collections, accompanied by an events programme and resources to promote public engagement and to support delivery of relevant parts of the school curriculum.

The monograph will have two parts. The first focuses on Soviet cartographic policy-making, planning and production. It examines, in particular, the contradictions and conflicts which the bifurcation between 'culture' and 'science' (or between 'ideology' and 'technology') produced within Soviet mapping agencies and among the surveyors and topographers, geodesists and geographers, artists and administrators, scholars, soldiers and secret policemen who shaped the development of post-revolutionary map-making.

Part two places Soviet cartography in its cultural context. It explores the crucial role of Soviet mapping in the re-imagining of the world and re-creation of self and society that were at the heart of revolutionary aspirations. I argue that the Soviet regime used 'map culture' to create and inculcate a new vision of space that encompassed not only reconfigured political territories but a regenerated nature, including human nature, brought into harmony with society. Map-making itself, as a process combining science, technology and art, became both metaphor and model for the synthesis of rational method and aesthetic impulse that characterised revolutionary modernism and global modernity more generally; and the ability to read maps became a symbol of culturedness - even while all but the most generalised maps were hidden from view.

This study is mainly based on recently declassified materials from Russian archives. As well as bureaucratic documents on policy, personnel, planning and production, the collections offer rich insights into, among other themes: map design, symbolism and content; teaching with maps and globes; map secrecy and censorship; topographical expeditions and fieldwork; the role of women in cartography; interactions with foreign mapping organisations; and political control and terror.

The research is also grounded in critical analysis of a huge range of sheet maps, atlases and globes; of handbooks of map-making and map-reading; and of cartographic imagery and allusions in cultural media including literature, film, graphic arts (especially political posters), photography, architecture and urban planning, postcards and postage stamps.

A number of recent broadcasting events and an exhibition, in all of which I have been involved, testify to a high level of public interest in the history of cartography. During the Fellowship, in collaboration with the British Library, I shall capitalise on this existing public enthusiasm, building on my track-record in public engagement, as well as on experience gained in co-directing an AHRC follow-on project, to translate my research into three significant forms of impact.

1. Social-cultural impact: enhancing public knowledge and understanding

In 2010 I advised the producers of two BBC 4 television series on the history of cartography: 'Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession' and 'The Beauty of Maps: Seeing the Art in Cartography'. The 20 April 2011 repeat screening of episode two of 'The Beauty of Maps' attracted 445,000 viewers, a 54% uplift to BBC4's average share in that time-slot. I was also a consultant to the BL's major exhibition 'Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art' (2010), which attracted a record 227,000 visitors to the gallery and almost as many to the website. The Daily Telegraph wrote that 'This really is a show that turns the world on its head. I'll never look at a map in quite the same way again.' Cartography is clearly a crowd-puller, and has the potential to reshape people's views not merely of maps but of our social, cultural and political reality.

A BL exhibition drawing on my Soviet cartography research (possibly including Nazi and Fascist maps, see 'Pathways to Impact'), accompanied by public events, one or more articles in popular history magazines and talks to amateur historical and map societies, will aim similarly - if on a smaller-scale - to effect a shift in public knowledge and understanding of cartography as both a scientific and cultural phenomenon, as well as in perceptions of modern Russia's internal development and relations with other countries, and (depending on the focus of the exhibition) in the public appreciation of 20th century European history.

2. Educational impact: supporting and enriching the curriculum

The BL's exhibition was accompanied by a learning programme in which nearly 3,000 schoolchildren and adults participated. Map exhibits teach people about cartography, of course: about maps' technical production; how maps 'lie' and distort by their nature; how maps have their own cultural history; and how maps are nevertheless indispensible tools for orientation and planning, as well as for communicating spatial knowledge. But maps can be readily used to teach people about any phenomena, real or imagined, in the past, present or future, which can be analysed or described spatially.

Accordingly, I will explore ways of using the planned BL exhibition, with an associated website and other learning resources, to facilitate delivery of relevant parts, at different stages, of the History, Geography, Citizenship, General Studies and Humanities syllabi.

3. Economic impact: benefiting the UK's cultural sector

Visitors to the BL's exhibition spent a record £336,000 on associated publications and souvenirs. Over 3,000 people paid to attend events in the BL's programme of public talks and workshops accompanying its exhibition. A roundtable discussion on 'Power Propaganda and Art', in which I participated, sold out 250 seats (at £7.50 per ticket, generating £1875 of income for the library).

The proposed BL map exhibition arising from the Fellowship, with its own events programme, would thus generate revenue for a major public institution as well as intellectual and educational benefits for its visitors.


The 'Pathways to Impact' document includes suggestions for further potential exploitation of my cartography research for social, educational and economic benefit, as well as possible means of developing it - especially via existing and/or new collaborations with digitisation projects - to benefit policy-makers, professionals and the third sector.