Constructing “Russian civilisation”: A critical introduction to the National Atlas of Russia (publ. 2004–2008)

ABSTRACT This paper presents a critical analysis of the Russian National Atlas (2004–2008), the presentation of which is based on the tradition of the Soviet school of complex atlas production, and which is the first (and so far only) Soviet and post-Soviet Russian national atlas. Following the critical cartography approach, this paper deconstructs the atlas’ structure and the range of presented maps to decode the construction of the national spatial identity and the imposed “cartographic silences”. The paper shows how the presented maps and texts aligns with the overarching image of the Russian State as strong military state, and reveals the colonial narratives toward its Northern and Eastern peripheries.


Introduction
Soviet cartography has attracted a considerable amount of critical analysis from historians of cartography and Soviet spatial thought. The principal focus of their investigation has been the Soviet production of maps and national cartographic surveys, the connections between Soviet cartography and state propaganda, and the Soviet obsession with the production of classified maps. Following the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many former Soviet states advanced their map production independently of the former Soviet tradition, establishing new cartographical traditions in ways that conformed to their new self-images as independent states (Zeigler 2002). In particular, there were significant increase in the production of domestic maps and national atlases. Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Latvia, and Lithuania developed new national atlases in the late 1990s, and these were published at the beginning of the 2000s and were an integral part of the project of nation-building. What is of considerable interest to political scholars, historians, and critical cartographers in this field is the rise of such new map-making traditions in post-Soviet countries against the backdrop of the development of new national identities, the rewriting of national histories, and the distance these emerging states seek to place between them and their Soviet pasts (see, for example: Jagomägi and Mardiste 1994).
In contrast, map production in post-Soviet Russia has rarely been approached from the perspective of critical cartography, even though following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was primarily the Russian state that inherited the main Soviet geographical research institutions, the Soviet tradition of mapmaking, and (in some cases) relevant personnel and experts. Even recent geopolitical developments in the post-Soviet space that have involved military intervention by Russian troops (such as the outbreak of the war with Ukraine in 2022, annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the formation of the Russianbacked break-away statelets self-termed the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics) have not provoked interest in Russian cartography as a governmental tool designed to produce and construct a post-Soviet national identity. This article aims to partly fill that gap by analyzing one of the most ambitious projects of Russian post-Soviet cartography: the National Atlas of Russia (NAR), issued in the period [2004][2005][2006][2007][2008]. The NAR is approached not only as a major repository of geographical information and data about the Russian Federation but also as a collection of spatial concepts and ideas about Russian space, places, history, culture, and ethnography produced by the Russian government.
Many studies have been published on the formation of Russian nationalidentity after 1991. 1 Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian government has introduced various policies, and manifested the "national identity" through various media and public sources. Scholars have especially emphasized the close connection between Russian national identity and the geopolitics practiced by the Russian state, especially since the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of the war in eastern Ukraine. 2 However, the NAR was published before those two events, which is why in the current paper I take into account the narratives of national identity pushed by the Russian government in the 1990s and 2000s. The construction of Russian national identity in the first decade of the twenty-first century is usually associated with the creation of an image of Russian that emphasizes its superpower status as a strong military state, the importance of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the common history of the Eastern Slavic peoples (Tolz 1998). This background has resulted in the fact that the Russian historical narrative is increasingly monopolized by the Russian government, whose interpretation is imposed through various media associated with or directly controlled by that government, such as textbooks, museum exhibits (Gavrilova 2021), and commemorative events.
However, relatively little attention has been paid to similar processes in the production of geographical knowledge in Russia, whose transmission into society is largely dominated by the Russian Geographical Society (RGS), the main funding body and the largest non-academic institution in the field of post-Soviet geography, which is largely made up of researchers and professors from the Faculty of Geography of Lomonosov Moscow State University, one of the most prestigious tertiary institutions in contemporary Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin and many of his close allies are honorary members of the RGS and its executive boards. It is clear that the RGS has provided media support for recent geopolitical tensions involving Russia; members of the RGS are actively involved in the production of media representations (such as an annual exhibition dedicated to Russian landscape photography entitled Virgin Russia 3 ) and the production of maps and atlases (including the National Atlas of the Russian Arctic). All such knowledge is produced in the context of the state-sponsored Russian national identity, while the production of geographical knowledge (in the academic, public, and educational spheres) in Russia is also heavily politicized.
This article lies at the intersection of critical cartography, human geography, spatial history, and the growing literature on post-Soviet silences and "blank spots" developed by scholars including the philosopher Svetlana Boym (1994) and the anthropologist Alexey Yurchak (2005). The right to speak about a topic or the right to omit, exclude, or neglect it is always associated with power (Yurchak 2005) and the creation of cultural myths within society is a privilege restricted to those in power, while the same is true of the creation of "common unsaids" (Gavrilova 2021). Boym constructed her concept of "cultural myths" based on the earlier work of Levi-Strauss and Barthes, particularly the latter's Mythologies (Barthes 1957). In my previous works (Gavrilova 2021), I developed a topology of the "cultural myths" and "common silences" produced and reproduced in Russian regional museums, and in this paper, I will extend this approach to see how maps are used to create shared myths and silences.
The conventional, positivistic history of cartography approaches maps as accurate objective models, and sees the development of cartography as a progression to better and more accurate maps, with the utopic goal of building an ideal model of the Earth and establishing the best possible communication between the reader and the author (Crampton 2001). In recent decades, however, there has been an "epistemological shift" in the way we interpret and approach the nature of cartography connected to the introduction of a postmodern approach to the subject. This is usually associated with the geographer and cartographer John Brian Harley and his iconic work "Deconstructing the Map" (1989), along with his claim that maps should be understood in a wider discourse as a form of social construction. Harley shifts the perspective of maps as a "mirror of nature" to one in which they are viewed as "cultural texts", along with a range of other postmodern approaches intended to allow one to "deconstruct" a map, critically analyze the role of the author and power relations in its production, and approach visual elements of the map as would be done in a visual art analysis. This article adopts this view of maps and the methods of critical cartography, whereby "common silences" are seen as similar to Harley's concept of "cartographic silences". More than any other form of media, maps and atlases are connected to power, and national atlases in particular possess the power to impose specific myths and silences over a society. The concept of "cartographic silences" does not necessarily imply the omission of, for example, a historical event, place, or group of people; as I have shown in my previous research, there are various methods of creating a "blank spot", based on Barthes' myth making techniques. The methods of persuasive cartography or cartographic manipulations can contribute to the creation of these "cartographic silences" via the choice of which data to present, the structure of the legends, the choice of projections and scales, and the visual language.
This article approaches maps (and atlases) in this postmodern tradition, viewing them as social and cultural products whose content is mediated by a range of factors including editors, authors, and production institutes, as well as the social and political background of the country in which they are produced. Ultimately, this article seeks to answer questions about the background of the production of the NAR and explores the depiction of dominant narratives in representations of history, geography, and society, showing the extent to which these narratives correlate with political concerns, geopolitical tensions, and the construction of the Russian national identity in Russia in the period 2004-2009. It also decodes narratives common to such atlases in order to trace the construction of the image of Russia and contribute to our overarching understanding of the creation of "common silences" and "cartographical silences" by the Russian government. To this end, this article will show how the structure of the NAR, the composition of maps, and the accompanying texts shape and form the spatial image of the country, the dominating narratives and topics that constitute these maps, and what these maps do not show. The article contributes to the field of human geography and critical cartography through its analyses of newly formed post-Soviet nation states and the rise of the production of national atlases, while it is also intended to widen existing approaches to post-Soviet cartography, deepen our understanding of the construction of the Russian national identity, and showcase the role of the NAR in that process.

Nation states and the rise of the national atlas
A national atlas is not merely a detailed atlas of a country; it is a specific collection of spatial knowledge that is closely connected to the rise of nation states and expressions of national identity. In short, national atlases are "symbolic [of] nationhood, national unity, [and] national pride" (Monmonier 1994, 1). In his analysis of eastern European national atlases, Peter Jordan states that "the editors of the national and regional atlases . . . [seek] to represent national/ regional identity, the image of self of a country or region, which they want to underline for their own citizens and to the outside world" (2004,150). Similarly, the compilers of the NAR explicitly assert that a "national atlas is a specific type of cartographic production in which the state itself . . . is the subject of mapping" (Conception of the National Atlas of Russia 1996). This being so, any analysis of a national atlas must perforce be more ambitious than that of any other because it is closely associated with the understanding of national and spatial identity that the state is asserting through the production of the atlas.
National atlases have been produced since the late 19th century, with peaks in production coming in the decades after World War I and World War II (universally known in Russian as the Great Patriotic War), although Monmonier dates the roots of these "iconic" works to the 16th century, when atlas-making was a privilege of powerful and developed countries, and maps served as powerful national symbols. The first atlas designated a "national atlas" was produced by Finland (then part of the Russian Empire) in 1906, followed by productions by Egypt and Czechoslovakia in 1928 and 1935, respectively. After World War II, there was a wave of national atlases produced by countries in the Global South. The 18th International Geographical Congress, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1956, which established the National Atlas Commission of the International Geographical Union, noted that "national atlases are commonly understood as capital comprehensive geographical atlases of individual countries, containing a summary and synthesis of current scientific knowledge on the physical, economic and political geography of the country concerned" (18th International Geographical Congress 1956), and postulated that the creation of national atlases would be a central task of future map production. The prominent role of Soviet cartographers in integrated mapping was recognized when Professor K. A. Salishchev was elected chairman of the National Atlas Commission of the International Geographical Union in 1956. In 1960, the National Atlas Commission released a report on the main traits of national atlases that claimed that they can be defined as follows: They (1) cover a single country or nation; (2) provide a variety of thematic maps based on scientific data, covering the physical, economic, demographic, and culturalhistorical geography of the country; and (3) excite the enthusiasm and support of the nation's scientific organizations and government agencies. In the decades following World War II (1956)(1957)(1958)(1959)(1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964)(1965)(1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972), the International Geographical Union firmly established the symbolic role of national atlases as an inseparable part of the formation of the identity of a nation state. Despite the fact that a leading Soviet cartographer was the head of the National Atlas Commission, and the important roles played by many Soviet cartographers in developing the national atlases of the other socialist states in the 1970s and 1980s such as Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam, the Soviet Union (and later, Russia) was one of the several countries that until recently did not have its own national atlas.

Soviet cartography and the production of national atlases
Cartography always played a prominent role in supporting the territorial claims of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and the surveillance and production of maps of various territories was one of the most important geographical tasks of those entities. Aside from its well-developed system of geodesic surveillance (Baron 2008) and military and topographic mapping (John and Kent 2020), the Soviet school of cartography was particularly famous for so-called complex atlas production. The "school of complex atlas production" constitutes an important part of the history of Soviet cartography, and is associated with the cartographers from Moscow and St Petersburg State Universities and the Geographical Institute of the Academy of Science of the former Soviet Union. Post-Soviet and Russian historians and cartographers consider the main atlases produced in the Soviet Union to be prototypes of the National Atlas that the Soviet Union didn't have. The Conception of the National Atlas of Russia (Koncepcija nacional'nogo atlasa Rossii 1996) considers the comprehensive Atlas of Asiatic Russia (published in 1914 by the Resettlement Department of the General Directorate of Land Management and Agriculture) to be the first atlas issued on the territory of Russia that was "very close, based on its contents, to being a national atlas". The famous three-volume Great Soviet Atlas of the World, which was developed in 1930-1940 by a special research institute set up specifically for that purpose, issued two volumes (in 1937 and 1940, respectively) -the third one was not published due to the outbreak of World War II -that have been perceived by the professional community as equivalent to the national atlases of other states "due to depth of its contents and its level of detail", but "due to its small print run and limited distribution, the World Atlas could not perform the functions of a national atlas" (5). That would certainly have been something of a stretch; the world atlas covered the whole world and was intended to represent a socialistic view of the world, rather than focusing on the spatial identity of the Soviet state. In the period 1960 to 1980, the "school of complex atlas production" continued with the development of regional atlases and atlases of former Soviet republics (Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and others), which, according to the conception, "now can be seen as the national atlases of these countries" (9). It is very important to consider and discuss whether these atlases should be thought of as a type of national atlas and therefore a form of national self-expression, or whether they simply reflect the gaze that the Soviet Union projected on them as a form of colonial influence.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many former Soviet republics started to develop their own new national atlases to distance their new national (spatial) identity from that of the Soviet period. The Atlas of the USSR, published in 1983, also had "some traits of the national atlas" (Koncepcija nacionalʹnogo atlasa Rossii,9), while a number of fundamental thematic atlases were created following World War II in the form of climatic, forests, medicinal plants, agricultural, lithological, and paleographical atlases. This is the background to the formation of a solid scientific and production base for the development of complex atlases of various scales and content in the Soviet Union, with leading positions taken by Moscow and St Petersburg State Universities, the Institute of Geography of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The idea of the creation of a national atlas of the Soviet Union began to develop intensively in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but some early maps -such as the famous "Map of Industralization" developed for the International World Exposition of 1937played an important role in "shaping the image of the Soviet nation-state" (Moran 2006, 671).
However, real steps to produce such an atlas were only taken in the late 1980s, when the Faculty of Geography of Lomonosov Moscow State University commissioned a report on the feasibility of creating such an atlas. The National Atlas of Russia project started in 1993, when the Federal Service of Geodesy and Cartography of Russia assigned the Central Scientific Research Institute of Geodesy, Aerial Surveying, and Cartography (CSRIGAEC) the task of evaluating the possibility of researching the "development of the concept, structure, and programme of the National Atlas of Russia". In 1994, the Russian government adopted a resolution that established a Federal Target Programme to last from 1994-1995 to 2000, called Advanced Technologies in Cartography and Geodesy Support of the Russian Federation, one of whose most important tasks was the production of a National Atlas of Russia. The actual process of designing the NAR began in 1995; under the leadership of A. A. Lyutoy and V. V. Sveshnikov, scientists and cartographers from 11 organizations, ministries, and departments developed a draft "Concept of the National Atlas of Russia". The concept was recognized both in Russia and abroad, but its implementation required considerable funds, which in 1995 Roskartografia 4 did not have, so its production was not in the end approved. This initial concept suggested that the national atlas would be made up of ten volumes covering the following topics: A general physical geographical atlas of Russia; nature and natural resources; population and social life; the economy; ecology; a history of Russia; culture and national heritage; Russia and space; regions of Russia; and commerce, the last of which was to be smaller, to include the most significant maps from other volumes, and to be sold separately.
The year 1997 can be thought of as the start of the production of the National Atlas of Russia, when work began on the first volume, A General Introduction to Geography. Along with the process of determining the content of the atlas, computer technology was developed to support the editorial and compilation work, which allowed the parallel creation of polygraphed and electronic versions. The content of this first volume underwent some changes, in comparison to the concept advanced in 1995; the format was reduced and the scale of maps changed accordingly, but the volume grew to include 540 pages. In 2001, the concept of the National Atlas of Russia was revised again, and it was now to consist of four volumes: The general characteristics of the territory; Nature and ecology; Population and economy; and Culture. The atlas was also to include maps, schemes, texts, aerial and space-based images with annotations, and reference materials in the form of tables, charts, graphs, diagrams, indexes of geographical names, and thematic terms. Printing of the hard copy of the fourth and final volume of the NAR was completed in April 2009, and an online version is also available.
This historical overview makes it clear that the history of the NAR represents a continuation of the Soviet cartographic and complex atlas tradition and is inseparable from that of Soviet cartographers. In that sense, unlike the national atlases produced by the other former Soviet republics, the NAR is based on the solid institutional and conceptual base of Soviet map production, and can be seen as a long-awaited achievement of Soviet cartography.
National atlases are one of the most powerful instruments available to a state determined to claim power and authority over a territory, and to express the national identity. They often serve as a symbol of a nationhood, and communicate state-approved concepts about a nation. Indeed, national atlases may be seen as a set of government-sponsored spatial concepts and messages in cartographic form. The NAR is the first and only national atlas produced on the territory of Russia; it was produced by direct order of the Russian government, and with the support of the Russian Geographical Society, which has recently was directly affiliated with the ruling United Russia party. The NAR heavily relies on the knowledge and approaches of the Soviet cartographic school, and borrows many of its methods from late Soviet developments in cartography.

Methodology and data
The NAR is an extensive, four-volume atlas containing a total number of 1,600 maps and involving the collaboration of a range of contributors, with texts written by both scholars and politicians.
Conceptually, the main strands of analysis in this paper focus on the proclamation of a national identity in Russia in the period 2004-8, and the silences which this involves. The following parts of the paper focus on (1) the contents of the various volumes that make up the NAR; and (2) the specific six map series and topics in the atlas: "The formation, investigation, and mapping of the territory of Russia"; "The main migration routes on the territory of the Russian state"; "The 'predominant' ethnicity [in Russia]; 'Comfort zones' for living"; "Economic colonisation"; and "The benefits of the [Soviet] planned economy". This is done both via an analysis of the contents of the maps, as well as their projections, scales, visual symbols, color ranges, legend structures, system of classifications, and supporting texts, following the methodological approach introduced by Pickles (2003) that takes account of the graphic, mathematical, and linguistic parts of a map. The analysis is mostly based on the electronic version of the NAR, available in CD format and online. 5 The online version presents scanned versions of analogue maps from the printed version of the atlas, without any of the interactive maps common to web cartography.

Deconstructing the NAR
The four volumes of the National Atlas of Russia are: "A general introduction to the territory"; "The nature of Russia"; "Population and economy"; and "History and culture". All four also contain considerable explanatory and introductory texts. The atlas begins with an introduction purportedly written by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who underlines the importance of the NAR, followed by the editorial assertion that the object of the NAR is to map the Russian "state itself, in all its form of existence and development". This inclusion provides further grounds to analyze the atlas as to some extent a reflection of governmental ideas and concepts.
It is worth first mentioning one feature common to all volumes of the NAR and the majority of maps: the choice of scale ranges for the "European" and "Asian" (Siberia and Far East) parts of Russia. In all the volumes the maps of these areas are presented at different scales, and therefore with varying degree of detail. The second, third, and fourth volumes include a fairly large number of large-scale maps of "European" Russia with supporting materials for the smallscale thematic maps, but rarely for Asian Russia. On the pages which depict both European and Asian Russia, the scales for the Central European part versus the Siberian and Far Eastern parts are 1:4,000,000 versus 1:45,000,000. Given that European Russia is a far smaller territory than Siberian and the Russian Far East, this decision creates a significant bias in representation in favor of Central Russia. Such detailed and larger-scale representations are usually reserved for areas of high perceived importance that generate social and economic value, and in the case of the NAR this bias toward European Russia implies its greater importance in comparison to the rest of the country. Another interesting observation in this regard is that the "Russian Arctic" region is assigned a special position alongside European and Asian Russia, and is presented in the first volume with a comparable number of maps.

The first volume of the NAR
The first volume of the NAR, "A General Introduction to the Territory", consists of 11 chapters: introductory maps of the "Physical geography of Russia" and "Russia in a political map of the world"; "The formation, research, and mapping of the territory of Russia"; "The federal state of Russia"; "The geographical regions and seas of Russia"; "European Russia"; "Images of European Russia from space; "Asian Russia"; "Images of Asian Russia from space"; "The Russian Arctic sector"; "Images of the Russian Arctic Sector from space"; and "Reference information". Each of these sections is accompanied by explanatory texts.
The section "The formation, research, and mapping of the territory of Russia" The chapter of most significant analytical interest in the first volume of the NAR is "The formation, research, and mapping of the territory of Russia", which consists of ten sub-sections, each dedicated to a specific period of time (from the first millennium of the common era until the present day). This section is dominated by texts that outline a conventional history of the formation of the Russian Empire, which starts with the history of the Slavic peoples as they expanded toward southern, eastern, and northern Eurasia. These historical narratives intertwine with the history of scientific expeditions and progress in the mapping of the territory of Russia, which is in turn connected to the history of military campaigns in Russia's northern and eastern peripheries. For example, the military campaigns and expeditions of Yermak Timofeyevich, which resulted in the accession of the Khanate of Sibir (Figure 1) into the Russian Empire, together with the expedition of Dezhnev and other "pathfinders". The maps in this section do not feature any territories outside Central Russia until the 17th century (when Slavic peoples began their expansion into Siberia and the Far East) and completely ignore the numerous indigenous people who resided in non-European Russia territories at this time. Many do not even include Asian Russia before it became part of the Russian state, nor are there any discussions of the consequences of Russian colonization and the implementation of religious and secular institutions on the eastern and northern peripheries of the Russian Empire. The sub-section continues until the time of the formation of the Russian Federation in 1991. The Soviet period is characterized by maps of administrative divisions alongside a history of the Soviet cartographic school and its achievements, and presents an interpretation of the link between knowledge production and state formation.
The mapmaking practiced by Russian Imperial and later Soviet institutions is presented as the only such school that existed and that generated geographical knowledge. Indigenous mapping initiatives and the histories of the numerous small groups of people who lived in across northern Russia are not mentioned at all. From the beginning, the NAR displays a clear colonial approach in its presentation of the formation of a Russian state as a series of military expansions toward the north and east, supported by a colonial narrative of geographical knowledge production and mapping. This is done explicitly; the text overtly states that, for example, "the accession of the Caucasus [region] to the Russian state made geographical expeditions necessary . . . which resulted in a number of geographical discoveries". Again, this statement is an assertion that geographical knowledge was only accumulated by Russians, and incorporates the history of discoveries into the process of nation-building.

The second volume of the NAR
The second volume, "The nature of Russia", consists of an extensive range of maps (there are 495 map pages), and is a classic example of the type of work favored by the Soviet and Russian schools of physical geography. It is divided into 15 chapters presenting the terrain, climate, vegetation, soils, geology, the evolution of the environment, seas and ecology of Russia today. Many of the maps in "The nature of Russia" reveal the predominant views on the construction of "nature" and nature-human relationships in post-Soviet Russia. The Soviet school of geography had some specific traits, which made it stand apart from Western modernist geographies, and which were depicted by the historians of Soviet science as a "bias towards physical geography and exploration science, the predominance of the landscape approach, and policy orientated research" (Oldfield and Shaw 2015). Many of these traits are still visible in the post-Soviet Russian school of geography, as shown by the structure of the volume and the topics chosen for it. The "Landscape" chapter features more than ten original maps of landscapes, which are seen as separate elements of the environment characterized by a range of criteria. These maps feature PTK ("nature-territorial complexes", a way to describe lands and territories established by the Soviet scientists V. V. Dokuchaev and L. S. Berg), but do not include any human-made or anthropogenic landscapes. The anthropogenic influence on the environment is presented in maps such as "The potential sustainability of landscapes" and "Anthropogenic pressures on the environment", which display a range of human activities and the ways they can potentially harm the environment.
The volume also includes a range of maps that approach nature as simply a bank of exploitable resource, with minerals and energy covered in the maps dedicated to geology, while maps of forests typically emphasize their "productivity" and the various ways they can be used. The "Fauna" chapter continues this approach, featuring maps of "Rabbit resources", "Fox and wolf resources", "Bear resources" (Figure 2), and "Bird resources", among others (National Atlas of Russia 2008, 386-388).
The accompanying texts for these maps discuss the importance of the fur industry and hunting in Russian culture and history, and explain the nature of duck hunting in various regions. The final part of this section includes a map of endangered species and the "depletion" in species variety. The chapter on the "Current state of the environment" includes numerous maps on "The anthropocentric influence" on the environment, "The influence of railways", "The influence of the oil and gas industries", and even a map on technological disasters such as the Chernobyl catastrophe. The chapter ends with a map of "Socio-environmental tensions", which, the reader is informed, is "a characteristic of the actualisation of socio-environmental processes in their relationship with the real anthropogenic load on the natural environment. It allows us to assess the relationship (often not directly perceived by people) between changes in the properties and characteristics of the biosphere and real social life". What the map actually shows remains controversial and unclear because it displays environmental zoning based on an "indicator" of socio-ecological tension. According to the accompanying text, it is "firstly, the presence in the public consciousness of stable and widespread assessments that link the environmental situation with the threat or actual impairment of the most important social and spiritual needs of the population, and secondly, the implementation of social actions by the population corresponding to this state of public consciousness".
Overall, the volume is based heavily on Soviet notions of nature and resources as a base for the construction of socialism, and that envisioned the proper attitude of Soviet man toward nature was to utilize it to that end.

The third volume of the NAR
According to its introduction, the third volume, "Population and economy", presents a "comprehensive, multipurpose, cartographic model of the country's population and economic systems at the present stage of development . . . intended for wide use in management, social, economic, scientific, educational, and other spheres of activity". The editorial introduction goes on to say: "Almost all the thematic content of the maps is based on the use of calculated indicators based on official statistical data, including the results of the all-Russian population census conducted in 2002". There are nine chapters in this volume: "The place of Russia in the world"; "The territorial composition of Russia"; "The geographical conditions of settlement and economy"; "The population and settlement"; "The social sphere"; "Social and political development"; "The production sphere"; "The infrastructural sphere"; and "Regions and regional development". These chapters offer a large set of statistical maps that provide detailed characteristics of Russia's population (birth rates, divorce rates, level of urbanization), regions (economic and physical geographical characteristics), and economy.
The "Regions and regional development" chapter contains a range of maps that chart the evolution of the "typology of regions based on the [regional] structure of economics" (1960,1975,2002) and the main sectors of the local economy, which are classed as "agricultural", "industrial", "service", or a combination of those spheres. Yakutiya (in eastern Siberia) was classified as a "service region" and Chukotka (in the Far East) as an "agricultural-service region". It is unclear why this occurred because Chukotka is home to only one large settlement (its capital Anadyr) where a service economy could have developed, and no agriculture is possible in the region because of the climactic conditions. The region is heavily dependent on the "traditional" indigenous practices of sea-mammal hunting and reindeer herding, but none of the indigenous traditional economies are mentioned or taken into account. The subsequent larger-scale maps, dedicated to the economy and mineral resources of specific federal districts, also do not offer any details about the role of traditional economics and lifestyles in the economic structure.
The volume goes on to present maps of the ethnic composition of Russia, starting with two maps of the percentage of ethnic Russians by region in 1989 and 2002. Russians are described as the "core ethnicity" of the Russian Federation. This is followed by a map of the ethnic composition of Russia, after which the reader is shown a map of "predominant" ethnicities and "others", the latter of which include the so-called "small-numbered peoples of the North" (shown on one small-scale map) and several close-up and largescale maps of Russia's European North, the Volga region, and the Caucasus. The main problem with all these maps is that they use different visual languages, which means that at least visually, they are impossible to compare. The proportions of "predominant" ethnicities in various ethnicities are shown as percentages in diagrams. "Small-numbered peoples" are shown in colored areas, whereas the large-scale part on the "others" map uses dots and colored areas to more precisely mark the distribution of various ethnic groups. The section is obviously biased toward European Russia in that it details the ethnic composition and distribution of ethnicities in this part of the country in much more detail than in Asian Russia on the other side of the Ural Mountains. This bias contributes to the overarching narrative of a "historical hierarchy" between Russians and other nationalities, and establishes Siberia, the Far East, and the North East as the Russian periphery. The next map in the volume pertains to the Russian Orthodox Church, showing the main churches and monasteries across the country, with a close-up map of European Russian churches and spiritual educational centers. This map is followed by one that displays adherents to various "Religious Associations" (such as Buddhists, Old Believers, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and others) by region. The legends used and the quantitative approach leave the northern parts of Siberia and Central Russia as well as the Far East almost empty; the paganism espoused by most of the "small-numbered people of the north" is neither mentioned in the legend nor represented in the map.

The section "Main Migration Routes on the Territory of the Russian State"
This chapter consists of a number of historical maps from the 12th century up to the period 2007-2008, showing the resettlement routes of people in different periods, mostly from central Russia toward the country's east and north. One of these maps is entitled "The Soviet Union before 1945" (The National Atlas 2008, 72), which depicts in its legend four types of resettlement: "Populations resettled during World War II"; "Evacuations of populations during World War II"; "Deportations"; and "Directions of population migrations" (Figure 3).
These are all included in the same map, as if the various populations' destinies, the social contexts, and the political reasons behind the movements were identical. The map poses many questions that are not answered in the short accompanying text. The map (and, indeed, the whole section) does not mention deported groups of people such as entire nations and ethnic groups, former kulaks, and political exiles. The same is true for the previous maps in this chapter, which do not clarify the nature of the "migration" being alluded to, or mention the long-standing tradition of Russian political exile to Siberia and the Far East. The accompanying explanatory text is extremely vague, merely saying that "Russian routes of migration historically go from the centre [of the country] to the peripheries. . . . In the 20th century, migration was mainly directed towards the east, to Siberia and the Far East. The population of the Far North grew faster than that of any other region. The migrants arrived from central [Russia]." During the Soviet Union, there were people who voluntarily resettled in the "virgin lands" of Russia's Far North and Far East, but there were also forced labor camps in these areas for more than 50 years, as well as large-scale ethnic and social deportations. According to our estimates, before 1945 the number of gulag prisoners in the Far East and Siberia was between 300,000-500,000 people a year. 6 It is uncertain whether "migration" is the most appropriate word to describe the colonial expansion of the Russian Empire between the 17th and 19th centuries, and the forced deportations, resettlements, and gulag camps that characterized the Russian East and Northern peripheries. The next map, "The Soviet Union in 1945-1991", shows the counter trend of the "repatriation of peoples evacuated during World War II" and the "repatriation of deported ethnicities". The accompanying text does not mention that the arrows on the map are most likely referring to the deported Crimean Tatar and Chechen ethnic groups. The same map documents the most common migration routes to the North and the Far East, which probably were those (at least partly) along which prisoners were sent to the gulags and resettlements of the later Stalin years. All these maps are developed on a small scale, which makes it quite hard to account for ethnic deportation on a regional level (as in, for example, the forced resettlement of indigenous people in Chukotka and Yakutiya), nor do such regional and local histories find their place in any other parts of the atlas. The next map is entitled "The migration of refugees and displaced people into Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union", and this information is displayed on a regional level, but no further explanation is provided regarding the definition of "displaced people" and the relationship of this category to illegal migrants from Central Asian countries. The supporting texts posit that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was accompanied by many large military conflicts, which resulted in massive currents of refugees and internally displaced peoples who sought to enter Russia. Refugee movements are shown on a regional level by means of a bar chart, with the main purpose of the map being to demonstrate the dynamics in each region up to the years 1995, 2000, and 2005. Over the course of these three years, there is a sharp decline in the number of refugees (the third (red) category is hardly distinguishable at all). However, the information does not cover patterns of migration, the distribution of resettled people, their reasons for migration, and their social-demographic characteristics; the only information provided on the map is the declining number of "displaced people", presented by region.
It can be said that the maps that address "migration routes" provide the reader with a false impression of the homogeneity of radically different state policies, and the social and economic conditions behind peoples' relocation and migration. The visualization of the information (in the form of legend, color, and scales) within individual maps and across series of maps (which use the same scales and colors) disingenuously places together historical events of completely different scales, natures, and effects.

The section "Comfort zones" for living
The chapter "Comfort zones" for living" in the third volume contains a map entitled "The health of the population: A health-environmental evaluation of the [Russian] territory" (Figure 4). The "sanitary-ecological system", which is a subject of regionalization used in this map, is a regional-typological division of environments with the same quality of health of groups of the population (similar in demographic, ethnic, and professional attributes) and specific regional pathology caused by the homogeneity of natural, social-domestic and ecological-hygienic conditions of population life. The map covers zonal and regional types of sanitary-ecosystems.
However, as we read in the legend, this estimation of the level of "comfort for living" is given for the "resettlers" (from central Russia, as I assume). Only areas in Central Russia such as Moscow are assigned "comfortable" status. The representation of the country's living conditions centered around an arbitrary understanding of the notion of "comfortable" and, presumably, based on the preferred lifestyle of ethnic Russians (although this is never overtly admitted) can be said to be a truly colonial perspective and approach; it ignores the lived experiences and everyday lives of indigenous communities and other nationalities, generations of whom have lived in "uncomfortable" conditions for centuries. Here, the NAR discounts entirely the lifestyles, human-nature relationships, and systems of agriculture and hunting of non-Slavic peoples, and resorts only to the perceived references of settlers. This vision is further elaborated in the section of the chapter entitled "An estimation of the geographical conditions for people's lifestyle and economy", in which one map -"The differentiation of northern Russia by natural and climatic factors" -depicts the majority of the territory of Russia as "uncomfortable", "extremely uncomfortable", or "absolutely uncomfortable". Of course, such estimations are based solely on the lifestyles of a people who do not live in such conditions or do not belong to indigenous communities of have lived there in comfort for centuries.

The fourth volume of the NRA
The fourth volume of the atlas, entitled "History and culture", contains an extensive number of federal, regional, and sub-regional maps that provide an overview of the historical development of the Russian state from the Paleolithic era up to the present day. Unlike the other volumes, "History and culture" starts with an explanatory text that sets the tone for what follows. The text introduces the "civilisational approach" to the history of the Russian state, stating that "Russian civilisation is a stable social community formed in the colossal expanses of Eastern Europe and Northern Asia on a multi-ethnic basis, as a result of the integration of large and small nations around the core of the Great Russian people. The uniqueness and identity of Russian civilisation is associated with a complex interaction of many factors: geographical, climatic, ethnic, political, and historical". The text goes on to elaborate on the mechanism of how the Russian state gained its territory, naming it "economic colonisation". It asserts the extent to which this form of colonization is "fundamentally different to the conquest of a foreign country to turn it into a colony, which has been the case in the West since the era of the great geographical discoveries", and that the process of "economic development in the North, the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia" means that "in contrast to the invasive policies of Western civilisation, which led to the destruction of entire peoples", Russia has managed to "preserve" its indigenous peoples, at the same time as "raising the [latter's] general cultural level". The editors termed these processes a "people's colonisation" that was supported by the state. The text does acknowledge that this process had a "downside", mentioning frequent "conflicts over 'free' territories" and the fact that "a lack of knowledge of the Russian language among indigenous populations facilitated abuses by the local authorities". As it concludes, the introduction summarizes the relationships between Russians and indigenous populations as "good neighbourly co-existence" facilitated by the "character and mentality of the Russians, who were largely devoid of a sense of national superiority". And, the reader is informed, despite "some negative new phenomena [such as] previously unknown diseases, the impoverishment of trades, and drunkenness, the absolute majority of the peoples who became part of Russia as a result of Russian colonisation increased their numbers substantially".
At another point, this text justifies the need for a "strong state" by reference to the huge size of Russia, the weak economic and transport connections in the country, "opposition moods", and the presence of "dozens of various ethnicities with traditional cultures". Such texts, which set the tone for the whole volume, defend the history of the Russian Imperial and Soviet territorial expansion by (1) claiming it to have been different to the Western process of colonization; (2) justifying any and all repressive policies by the need for a "strong state"; and (3) creating a strong feeling of the "continuity between the [Russian] collective past, present and future" (Malinova 2018). The "drawbacks" of Russian and Soviet "economic colonialism" are acknowledged but downplayed, with no information provided on repressive policies, forced relocations, wartime interventions, the boarding-school systems imposed on indigenous peoples, and bans on traditional forms of hunting. The resulting narrative charts a history of the Russian state from the perspective of Central and Western Russian; the reader learns nothing about the lives of the various ethnicities living in other regions, let alone those in the peripheries of the Russian territory. Elsewhere, the introduction emphasizes the special role of the Orthodox Church in the "formation and development" of the Russian state, underlining that "Orthodox, governmental, and national origins" are closely interconnected in the Russian mentality, and that Russians "usually do not consider these elements to be separate". All these factors have been used in recent years to construct a solid historical narrative designed to support the current regime in Russia.
The introduction is followed by a section featuring historical maps of wars conducted by Russian state (from the Livonian War of 1558-1583 to World War II), portrayed to show support for a strong militarized state. Historical events that took place in Siberia and the Far East are entirely excluded. The events included to illustrate the history of the development of "Russian civilisation" abide by the statesupported conventional historical narrative that sees the Russian state as the successor state to the Soviet Union, and creates no critical distance from Soviet politics. The Soviet period is dominated by detailed maps of the Soviet presence in World War II, as well as maps that cover social and economic life in the Soviet Union.
This section continues with a map entitled "Monuments of religious architecture", which depicts Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Muslim, and Buddhist places of worship. It is mostly restricted to Central Russia, which is presented on a 1:10,000,000 scale, with the rest of the country at 1:55,000,000. The legend includes only monuments deemed to be "of federal significance", which explains the preponderance of monuments in Central Russia, because Siberia and Asian Russia have a more complicated ethnic structure and history. For example, the "cult architecture" monuments of the "Small-numbered peoples of the North" and the Yakuts, which would likely have dominated the Siberian and Far Eastern areas, are completely excluded from the legend, and therefore not presented in the map.

The section "The benefits of a planned economy"
The section "Russia in the 20 th century: The Soviet Union" is also dominated by maps of wars, but in addition features several that pertain to the Soviet economy. "Industrial development of the USSR, 1926-1940" (Russian National Atlas 2008 depicts the main industrial centers of the Soviet Union developed in the years after World War II, including infrastructural elements such as roads, canals, and railroads, industrial centers, and factories ( Figure 5), as well as diagrams that chart rates of economic growth. The patterned areas on the map of Central Asian Soviet socialist republics shows the areas that suffered from widespread hunger.
The short explanatory text that accompanies this map highlights the importance and benefits of five-year economic plans, and states the extent to which these developments allowed the Soviet Union to economically advance. Neither the text nor the map inform the reader about the use of forced labor in factories and construction sites, and they remain silent about the close connection between the geography of gulag camps and the development of factories and infrastructural objects. Infrastructural objects and elements built by gulag prisoners such as the Moscow Canal and the White Sea-Baltic Canal are not identified as such on the map.
Stalinist repressions are not mentioned in the historical map section of the atlas section at all. However, the atlas does feature "industrial development" and a map entitled "Collectivisation" in the economic section. A further map entitled "Changes in culture, 1920-1930" shows the achievements of the Soviet education system, cities with institutions of higher education, and the ethnicities that were able to develop an alphabet and written language. Overall, the fourth volume works to emphasize the close connections between the Russian national spatial identity with Soviet history. It entrenches the atlas's colonial narrative, but distances itself from the putative classic "Western" process of colonization by explaining Russian colonization as merely a necessary expansion born of a desire to obtain natural resources. The "history" of the atlas is constructed around the history of Slavic peoples and Central Russia, and almost entirely ignores any other perspectives. The repressive policies that were a feature of the Soviet Union are completely excluded, and the predominance of maps detailing wartime events and movements contributes to the formation of the image of a necessarily strong, centralized state that is also a military superpower.

Conclusion
Its creators positioned the National Atlas of Russia as a comprehensive and representative atlas that fully represented its country, with roots in the Soviet cartographic tradition. The NAR is targeted at a wide readership, and designed to be used in many ways, as a handbook, in education, and for professional purposes. It is a powerful medium associated with the Putin government, but at the same time, it transfers spatial concepts and the spatial identity of the Soviet Union into contemporary Russia. The NAR contains extensive spatial data on various aspects of Russian citizens' lives, as well as the country's geography and environment. It occupies a unique place in the production of a spatial national identity in post-Soviet Russia, and due to its wide implementation (both printed and online) and usage, it significantly influences the geographical imagination of Russians. Nevertheless, the NAR provides considerable room for analyses of the concepts it transfers to society and the cartographic methods used for this purpose. The analysis presented in this paper encompasses several strands connected to the historical narrative such as the depiction of various ethnicities (including indigenous populations), the representation of 20 th -century socialism, and the creation of an image of post-Soviet Russia as a military superpower and the successor state to the soviet state.
The NAR presents the Russian Federation as the successor state to the Soviet Union that expanded outwards from Central Russia as a result of military interventions and "economic colonisation" to the country's present northern and eastern peripheries. Russians are presented as the nation that formed this state, and the majority of maps and data are centered around "Russian people" and Central Russia. The history of the Soviet Union is portrayed very conventionally, just as in Russian history textbooks and media, and generally omits Soviet repressions and ethnic deportations. The latter are acknowledged, but only as a part of the broader migrations of the 1930s-1940s, while the gulag system is completely overlooked. These omissions can be noted not only in the texts of the NAR but also in the choice of scales, data, and legends, in which events, culture, and ethnic Russian sites of architecture are prioritized over those of other ethnicities.
This analysis contributes to broader discussions of representations of "problematic" aspects of Russia's Soviet past and the decolonization of the Russian historical narrative, and shows how these have been incorporated into the Russian national and spatial identity. This heritage has done much to bring about the development of "cartographic silences" in Russia because contemporary Russian geography preserves cartographic techniques from the Soviet Union such as unbalanced choices of data, biased legends for maps, and the omission of certain historical facts and economic activities in favor of others, as in the case of indigenous communities. In this way, the NAR imposes spatial "blank spots" on the reader's understanding of Russia and its history, landscapes, and people, and, more broadly, the national identity of post-Soviet Russians. These "blank spots" are closely aligned with the overarching historical narrative and political position toward peripheral, ethnically non-Russian regions and geopolitical tensions in the Arctic that were in existence when the NAR was being developed. I believe that it is important to acknowledge that post-Soviet Russian maps and atlases function as very powerful cultural media that are still imposing a spatial identity on Russians, and that it is necessary to conduct further analyses of these matters as a source of mediation of the geographical imagination in the broader critical understanding of cultural production.