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Ligue des Bibliothèques Europeénnes de Recherche, Groupe des Cartot
hécaires de LIBER
TRANSLATE ENGLISH to Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Português, Español! Explanation
© LIBER and author
Published from: LIBER Quarterly, the journal of European research
libraries, ISSN 1435-5205, Vol. 8(1998), No 2. With permission from K.G. Sa
ur Verlag, Munich, Germany
E-mail: Natalya Kotelnikova
The theme of the conference "Planning the New Map Library" has induced us to thinking whether it is possible to create a new library fit out on the basis of higher techniques without solving an important issue - access to the Russian scientific maps. The lack of serious research, catalogues and facsimile publications of maps making up a treasury of printed and manuscript collections of the National Library is accounted for first and foremost by tough restrictions on use and publication of cartographic materials imposed under Soviet power.
Virtually the same regime rules regulating the use of presentday topographical and geographical maps of scales larger than of on to two million five hundred thousand applied to Russian maps of the 18th-19th centuries.
Thus a narrow circle of specialists which have permission to work with classified maps are the only ones who had access to these maps. It was quite impossible to publish their findings, but fragments of the maps and their conventional signs were allowed for publications. As a result the collections of old maps and atlases in the foremost Russian libraries received no attention and were unknown to a broad circle of readers. In this respect Russia is lagging behind many countries where map departments of libraries are in essence research establishments. They are engaged in study and facsimile publication of monuments of ancient cartography as significant elements of the history of civilization and valuable historical sources.
Till recently our fellow countrymen were actually bereft of similar publications. It was not until 1992 that the pictorial album Ancient engraved maps and plans of the 15th-18th centuries, composed by N. Borisovskaya on the basis of the collection of Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts appeared. The maps are shown there as a peculiar genre of the visual art - one of the scientific illustration, as samples of the engraving art. There are 80 colour and 260 tone pictures in the album. A geographical index and an index of painters, engravers, publishers, travellers are included.
This publication prompted the staff of the map department of the Russian State Library to start the scientific study of their holdings. The idea arose of publishing Russia in maps: a history of the geographical study and cartography of the country (1996) which was to cover maps from the collections of the Russian State Library. Thanks to this publication manuscript maps could be introduced to the general public for the first time.
The text and the index of painters, engravers, publishers, and travellers were compiled by A. Postnikov. Illustrations to the text and annotations to the maps were prepared by N. Kotelnikova and L. Zinchuk of the Map Department. 131 maps have been incorporated into the publications, some of them being published for the first time. These are the maps of Lake Baikal made by P. Frolov and N. Karelin. They show in particular the results of the bathymetric measurements of Lake Baikal (1,100-1,234 meters). These figures are close to modern sounding data.
Out of review cartographic materials bound up with projecting and construction of hydrotechnical installations two handwritten maps signed by Brigadier Molletski in the town of Augustov have been preserved. The maps may date from 1825 and 1828. The map of 1825 is drawn on scale 1:168,000. Only elements of the riverbed relief are plotted. The second map, that of 1828, drawn on scale 1:84,000 is a multicolored original created with a big artistic taste.
Apart from handwritten maps the book comprises printed maps of the 18th-19th centuries. The book starts with a historical sketch concerning the development of cartography in ancient Russia. The first documentary mention of a cartographic document in Russia refers only to the making of a map of moot lands. This exceedingly ancient Russian cartographic monument is pasted in the manuscript Map of landed property on the river Solonitsa is kept by the Manuscript Department of the Russian State Library.
The following chapter dwells upon the first maps of Moscow. In main administrative offices of the Moscow state (prikazes) there are different descriptions of lands, narrations and sketches by officials, itineraries, boundary draughts, etc.. There are no Russian maps preserved of that time, but there are plenty of foreign maps of Russia whose contents testify to Russian descriptions and maps being used in the course of their making. Works by B. Kordt, L. Bahrow, K. Salishchev, B. Rybakov, S. Baron mention this.
Apart from review maps many relatively large scale regional geographical drawings, dealing with separate towns and fortresses, ways of communication, real estates, etc. were compiled in the Russian state in the 17th century. The publications by V. Kusov recount this at length. In his opinion 1,040 Russian geographical drawings have been preserved. Plan of the town of Kashin, a 19th century copy of the original made in the 17th century, and kept by map department gives an idea of the contents of these drawings.
The next period of Russian cartography starts in the time of Peter the First and continues throughout the 18th century. Fargwarson and Gwyn having been the first tutors of the geodesists of Peters time it was the English topographic and geodetic school that exercised the greatest influence on the formation of the Russian school of topographers. The Atlas of the Russian empire constituted the climax of the work of Peters geodesists. By 1734 37 maps had been published or were prepared for the press. Separate maps from this atlas are found in the stock of the Map Department and have been incorporated in the book.
In the second half of the 18th century the process of penetration of Central Asia by the Russian empire sets in. The Map Department has preserved a rare cartographic source of that time: Draught compiled by director Velichko of the Orenburg custom-house from the data culled about Khiva. Under Catharina the Second the work of general land-surveying forges ahead. Many district plans are drawn, some of them being of great value, and are included in the book. The exact survey of the Baltic and the Caspian seas and the resulting maps and atlases is a significant scientific feat of Peter's time.
In the same period as the study and assimilation of North America, peninsula Alaska, islands Umnak and Unalaska is under way a whole series of both separate maps and atlases resulting from voyages round the world appear.
The final chapter deals with Russian cartography of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The military topographical surveys came to the fore, brought about by the war of 1812. Thereafter the military topographers started playing the leading part in making maps and atlases. They were of immense scientific and applied significance.
The book is replete with maps or fragments thereof. It gives an integral idea of the progress of Russian cartography and of the peculiarities of the development of the Russian state.
New names of cartographers and geodesists, of unknown or little known scientists and specialists as well as unpublished maps have been discovered and brought within the reach of science.