Two centuries of Russian Cartography

In relatively significant numbers, Russian «landscape schemes» intended to serve most diversified needs first appeared in the late XVI through XVIII century. They had been necessitated by controlling a centralized state and securing its borders. The economic rise scheduled by Peter I involved the task of geographically studying and mapping the entire country which required domestically trained geodesists and cartographers.

Since the 1740’s through the end of that century, all cartographic works had basically been carried out by the Academy of Sciences.

In 1812, the Mapping Depot was restructured as the Military Topographic Depot and in 1822, the Military Topographic Corps was created with the giant task of degree measurements, triangulation, and topographic surveys. The work carried out under the guidance of the outstanding military topographers put Russia in a position far superior to that of a lot of foreign countries.

By the late 18th and early XIX century, Russia had become one of the leading countries of the world in regard to the quantity and quality of general cartographic research.

In the Russian cartographic history, the XIX century was primarily marked with the development of large-scale topographic and special mapping.

Enormous were the merits in developing domestic cartography claimed by the Russian Geographic Society founded in 1845.