{"id":3383,"date":"2023-10-24T23:03:41","date_gmt":"2023-10-25T04:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/?p=3383"},"modified":"2023-10-24T23:08:59","modified_gmt":"2023-10-25T04:08:59","slug":"map-of-the-week-soviet-penetration-in-the-near-east-middle-east-and-east-africa-through-the-media-of-hospitals-and-medical-missions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/2023\/10\/24\/map-of-the-week-soviet-penetration-in-the-near-east-middle-east-and-east-africa-through-the-media-of-hospitals-and-medical-missions\/","title":{"rendered":"Map of the Week: \u201cSoviet Penetration in the Near East, Middle East and East Africa Through the Media of Hospitals and Medical Missions”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Whether it was espionage, space races, or the Red Scare, Americans have been fascinated, and at times terrified, by the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). While most of the understanding we have from the time of USSR\u2019s prominence is to-an-extent fabricated from Hollywood, there still was a level of intense intelligence work that was classified to the public. The featured Map of the Week, \u201cSoviet Penetration in the Near East, Middle East and East Africa Through the Media of Hospitals and Medical Missions,\u201d was published as a Classified Document by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This map contains a \u201cperimap\u201d that includes more than the actual map itself. It is composed of the map, arrows, and texts. All these aspects of this perimap, work to create a code of what the CIA was thinking and going through at the time of the creation of the map. This helps us to better understand the geopolitical tensions that still exist today between the two countries that were built throughout the Cold War.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States (US) and the USSR, alike, used several, sometimes questionable, methods to gain intelligence on the other. This intelligence was gathered as a part of the Cold War, which included an arms and space race, to try to stay one step ahead of the other country, whether that was ahead technologically or in security. The USSR, due to its authoritarian state faced less push back from the public and court system for its intelligence-gathering techniques. This meant that the USSR had the uninterrupted ability to conduct covert operations on several countries, including Ethiopia, Iran, Afghanistan, and South Yemen, which all are represented on the posted map.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is where American Intelligence services come in and form this map. The creator of the map was the CIA and everything on the map was chosen to be there through careful deliberation. For instance, a large majority of known Soviet intelligence hubs are now connected with Soviet ran hospitals on the map. This connection, while factual, also forms the relationship in the viewer\u2019s head that they are in some way connected. Even the scope of the map helps to set up relationships between the marked countries because they are seen on the same plane. Furthermore, the map shows the extended relationship of Soviet hospitals, Ethiopia intelligence, and the location of uranium mines in the Belgian Congo. One also must remember during this time that most of the Soviet hospitals that the public would hear about in America was filled with horror stories. Soviet hospitals would service political dissenters and prisoners through methods of abuse, drug usage, and experimentation. This map would paint a very different picture in the 1970s as opposed to modern day. In the 1970s, this map would represent the fear of Soviet intelligence and indoctrination growing in our world. Today, socialist hospitals generally take on a different image, one of free healthcare for all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not to say that there is no connection between Soviet hospitals and gathering intelligence, as these hospitals were widely known to be highly interconnected within the government. It instead proposes a new way of thinking. Maybe a map was what the Americans needed to see the connections between the two. Maps set people up to think in terms of relations and correlations, the danger lies when there are cases of correlation being misunderstood for causation. Looking now at the present, there has been many instances of these charted relationships becoming true. Ethiopia and Russia continued a partnership with each other that started in the late 1800s and has grown to include the joint mining of uranium in Ethiopia\u2019s neighboring nations, just like the map suggested.<\/span><\/p>\n

It becomes clear that the makers of the map wanted to show what the agreed upon \u201cfacts\u201d were, and maps have the special power to be able to do so. When a map is made, it is taken to be factual, when maps can be political and manipulative. There is a note at the bottom of the map that reads \u201cThe United States Government has not recognized the incorporation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the Soviet Union\u2026\u201d In other words, while the US Government did not acknowledge the growth of the Soviet Union, the CIA does and because they are the ones that put it on the map, they took a political stance saying that this is what should be believed. It should be noted that because this map was classified, it was only available to a small group of people meaning its information wasn\u2019t, at the time of publication, open to the general public. The secrecy of the map is even more intriguing because it shows the government controlling what information is exposed to the government. It shows the audience today that the US Government most likely agreed with the map behind closed doors and the increasing threat of the Soviet Union, but simply did not want to spread widespread panic on the issue. One can imagine a world where this map was freely published during the Cold War and the fear and panic that it would\u2019ve brought to the masses truly demonstrates the power of maps.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Works Cited:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEthiopia, Russia Enter New Frontier.\u201d <\/span>AllAfrica.Com<\/span><\/i>, 5 Apr. 2018. <\/span>ProQuest<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/docview\/2023435410\/citation\/58E1ACED5BAD417DPQ\/1<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMind Destruction in the USSR.\u201d <\/span>National Review<\/span><\/i>, vol. 31, no. 43, Oct. 1979, pp. 1347\u201348.<\/span><\/p>\n

National Archives NextGen Catalog<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>https:\/\/catalog.archives.gov\/id\/175514357<\/span><\/a>. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stack, Kevin. \u201cThe Cold War Intelligence Score.\u201d <\/span>American Intelligence Journal<\/span><\/i>, vol. 18, no. 1\/2, 1998, pp. 69\u201372.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Essence of the Soviet Health System.\u201d <\/span>American Journal of Public Health<\/span><\/i>, vol. 107, no. 11, Nov. 2017, pp. 1736\u201338. <\/span>PubMed Central<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2105\/AJPH.2017.107111736<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Blog of the Week: <\/span>https:\/\/catalog.archives.gov\/id\/305945<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This link connects to a collection of archival declassified CIA Maps from 1947-2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Atlas of the Week:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Woodbridge’s Larger Atlas: Atlas On A New Plan, Exhibiting The Prevailing Religions, Forms Of Government, Degrees Of Civilization, And The Comparative Size Of Towns, Rivers And Mountains<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.davidrumsey.com\/luna\/servlet\/view\/search?q=Pub_List_No%3D%223024.000%22&pgs=250&res=1&sort=Pub_Date%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This atlas would typically be used in schools to show different religions in relation to geography. The various maps have several legends to show which populations practice which religion. The atlas was published in the 1820s, but the exact year is contested between 1821 and 1824. Throughout the atlas, the word choice shows and reaffirms students the ideals of xenophobia and racism. One map explains how lower classes are often unsophisticated and ignorant. Additionally, the atlas generally favors towards Christianity , often using the terms \u201cbarbarous\u201d and \u201cpagan\u201d interchangeably. This atlas is useful to understand how and why people in the 1800s thought the way they thought, including general public morals and beliefs. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether it was espionage, space races, or the Red Scare, Americans have been fascinated, and at times terrified, by the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). While most of the understanding we have from the time of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21027,21024],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atlases-of-the-week","category-maps-of-the-week"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3387,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions\/3387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}