Who knows what dictators are up to behind closed doors (and iron curtains). For example, the Soviet Union mapped the world’s roads, typography, and, in some cases, the depth of rivers and density of forests: “Hundreds of symbols and colours decoded the landscapes: a thin blue line for rivers less than sixty metres wide; a thick blue line for bigger waterways; two crossed black anvils for a mine; pink shading for fire-resistant urban areas; specked green for wooded copses. As the authors of The Red Atlas, John Davies and Alexander J Kent, put it, it was ‘the most comprehensive global topographic project ever undertaken’.”
Speaking of the Soviet Union, let’s also remember the unique horror of the Soviet Gulag. The Nazis exterminated Jews, the Japanese massacred millions of Chinese. The Soviets killed their own: “The millions who died anonymously in the Gulag were not necessarily members of ethnic or religious minorities…The population of the camps largely corresponded to the population of the country.”
