The Construction and Editing of Military Maps Parts I and II

Moscow: V.V Kuibyshev Military Engineering Academy. Very Good. 1939. Hardcover. 37 ff & 13 ff. plates pages; Typescript, versos only of quarto sheets -- carbon. Thirteen plates (which appear to be photographs of the original text's illustrations, mounted to plain paper sheets). In a contemporary binder, citron buckram covers, metal hinges retaining leaves at the gutter margins -- pale blue endpapers. Bookplate of the (former) Army Map Service Library / 6500 Brooks Lane / Washington DC. This is a translation into English of a Russian publication from 1939. Originally published by the Voyenno-Inzhanernoy Akadamii imeni V.V. Kubsheva, Moskva 1939. This is an English translation by an unnamed writer, or writers. Part of a vast program of wartime translations of technical publications from various sources. The introduction to the text pays considerable attention to the importance placed by V. I. Lenin on military cartography and map making in general. The main text is largely historical, although similar texts covering much of this same ground rarely point out the observations of Marx and Engels on the discovery and mapping of America. The first title page is a transliteration of the Russian original. On this, there are Army Map Service stamps in ink and blind (each cancelled with a faint blue "X"). Also, the familiar "Surplus Duplicate" stamp of the Library of Congress Gift and Exchange Division appears, in red ink. The Army Map Service bookplate is also cancelled with a faint "X" in blue pencil, as is the small shelf label, entirely handwritten in black ink -- mounted to the upper left hand margin of the front cover. Both shelf label and bookplate state that this was "Copy 2." The Army Map Service, formed during the Second World War, has undergone several changes of name, and now is absorbed into the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). If any of these entities, or the Army Corps of Engineers, has retained "Copy 1" of this publication, they have not shared this information with OCLC or any other gathering of records which we were able to consult. A rare and interesting "book" -- not least because the Soviet Union may have already entered into the infamous Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact when this original Russian text was published in 1939. By the time the U.S. Army Map Service was formed, this pact was rendered null and void by the Nazi invasion of the USSR in Operation Barbarossa. .