[cjslep]

To support you, the USSR had mapped nearly the entire world (presumably with aid of satellites and GPS):

"The Soviets made far more detailed maps of some parts of the world. They mapped all of Europe, nearly all of Asia, as well as large parts of North America and northern Africa at 1:100,000 and 1:50,000 scales, which show even more features and fine-grained topography."

I sincerely doubt they have any of the China GPS offsets.

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

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Sounds like their civilian maps did, though:

> Worse, the maps for the masses were deliberately distorted with a special projection that introduced random variations. “The main goal was to crush the contents of maps so it would be impossible to recreate the real geography of a place from the map,” Postnikov tells me. Well-known landmarks like rivers and towns were depicted, but the coordinates, directions, and distances were all off, making them useless for navigation or military planning, should they fall into enemy hands. The cartographer who devised this devious scheme was awarded the State Prize by Stalin.

[rdtsc]

Yes those Soviet era maps were military and classified.

They only ended up in popular circulation after a quick retreat, fuckup and corruption that happened when the Soviet forced retreated from the Baltic states.

I've heard even US militaryused(uses?) some of those maps for parts of Africa or used then initially in Afghanistan. As nobody else has bothered much to go and cross reference and built detailed maps of those regions in that much detail.

[kbart]

My history teacher claimed she had seen one of these maps and accuracy was unbelievable, there were every minor remote woods path marked only known and used by locals.

[jaza]

Hadn't read that Wired article before - thanks for sharing. Wow! The Soviet maps are beautiful and accurate (not something you can say about many other Soviet legacies), a real historical treasure trove.

[JorgeGT]

Yes! I have one of those maps for my Spanish city, with all the names of features, neighborhoods, etc. in Cyrillic. It looks totally extracted from a dystopian parallel universe!