Cold-war mapping and surveying in the USSR

For mapping enthusiasts, an interesting article in the magazine "WIRED" this month (available both online and in print), regarding the efforts of the Soviet Union and their satellite states to provide topographical, military and state-approved mapping services during the Cold War. Of note is the comparison between our USGS 7.5minute topo maps and the maps they produced of the US, including most major cities- the article goes onto discuss how they apparently had access to a great amount of field-checked data on roads, bridges, pipelines, railroads, etc- exactly what one would want if planning for occupation or invasion with lots of trucks and tanks.

Link to the full article is at:

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/secret-cold-war-maps/

I found the most interesting part of the story to be the following account of surveying in the 1950's in the remote hinterlands of the USSR- not sure we had anything like this in this country since the 1800's.

"In post-war Russia, men died in the pursuit of better maps. After World War II, Stalin ordered a complete survey of the Soviet Union. Though aerial photography had reduced the need for fieldwork by then, it didn‰Ûªt eliminate it entirely, according to the 2002 paper by Alexey Postnikov, the Russian cartographer. Survey teams endured brutal conditions as they traversed Siberian wilderness and rugged mountains to establish networks of control points.
The program involved tens of thousands of surveyors and topographers, and hundreds of cartographers.
A surveyor himself, Postnikov writes that on a survey expedition to remote southern Yakutiya in the 1960s he found a grim note scrawled on a tree trunk by one of his predecessors. It‰Ûªs dated November 20, 1948. ‰ÛÏAll my reindeer have perished,‰Û it begins. ‰ÛÏThe food stores became bears‰Ûª prey. I am left with a very sick junior surveyor on my hands. I have no transportation or means of subsistence.‰Û The stranded surveyor says he will attempt to force his way to the River Gynym, a sparsely populated area at least 200 kilometers away. Given that temperatures in Yakutiya rarely rise above ‰ÛÒ4 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, Postnikov doubts they made it.