General Patterns in the World Geography of Soils

The author, head of the Department of Soil Science and Landscape Geochemistry at Moscow University's Geography Faculty, notes that the traditional zonal concept based on heat belts of the earth no longer accounts satisfactorily for the world distribution of soils. She proposes a typology of geographic soil units based on soil characteristics rather than soil-formation factors: major geochemical fields based on soil reaction and oxidation-reduction potential; and soil sectors within fields, defined in terms of soil classes and families, the history of soil formation, and the energy level of soil processes.     

魏源的《海国图志》与日本的《海图国志》时代

1860年以前,《海图国志》在中日两国的传播有很大差异,中国反应平淡,日本却形成《海国图志》时代。其主要原因是：《海国图志》虽成书于中国,但主要是借助传教士的世界史地著作这一特殊外部条件,中国国内并未形成与《海国图志》的观念相近的社会群体;日本不仅有学习西方的兰学者群体,儒学者群体的观念也与《海国图志》的现念相近,他们共同促成了《海国图志》在日本的广泛传播。     

Present Problems in Theoretical Geography

The need for a distinctive discipline of theoretical geography is enhanced by three current research trends in geography related to the scientific and technical revolution. They are remote sensing, resource use and economic location. Theoretical geography is concerned with the automated processing of the growing body of geographical data, the study of complex geosystems and their multidimensional geospaces and the development of a set of geographical axioms. The development of theoretical geography is closely related to the growing use of mathematical methods in geography by formulating geographical problems in a form amenable to mathematical analysis. Theoretical geography helps to formalize geographical concepts and facilitates the building of models in geography. Models, in turn, provide a better understanding of a system than can be expressed in words.     

Methodological Problems in Economic Geography

The author uses the techniques of paleogeography and archeology to trace climatic fluctuations in inner Asia and the rise of nomadism in the 1st millennium B. C. replacing a settled mode of stock herding and agriculture. Previous papers in this series appeared in Soviet Geography, June 1964 and February 1966.     

Practical Problems in Physical Geography

Before physical geographers will be able to play a more effective role in applied research, a number of methodological problems should be investigated. Work must be done on the kinds of relationships that exist between the physical environment and engineering structures. Physical phenomena of economic significance must be translated into commensurable technical and economic units that can be taken into consideration in the design of engineering objects.     

The Concept of the Unity of Geography in the Solution of Basic Problems of Geography

The author, a supporter of the unity of geography, calls for integrated geographic research as the only method by which geography can make its contribution to the planning of economic development. Only such an integrated approach, he says, can raise geography from its present “second-rate” position among the sciences to the forefront of scientific contributions to the national program of building a Communist society.     

Bank Statistics as a Source of Data for the Geography of Territorial-Economic Links

Bank statistics, covering interregional payments are described as a useful tool in the study of interregional commodity traffic because, unlike freight tonnage statistics, the payment data reflect also low-tonnage, high-value goods, which often determine the economic specialization of a region.     

Basic Problems of Middle-School Geography Education in the USSR

The author finds geography education neglected because educators lack a proper understanding of the role that can be played by geographic knowledge. He criticizes the present structure of geography courses as being excessively factual and encyclopedic, ignoring general concepts and failing to instill in students an ability to think for themselves in geographic terms. A new sequence of geography courses with improved content and methodology is proposed.     

Geography and the study of Third World underdevelopment re-revisited

Progress in development geography has been recently associated with the shift of the perspective on underdevelopment from a right-wing, conservative standpoint to a leftward, liberal-radical position. Marxism often conceals its message in obscure rhetoric with moral overtones on colonialism, slavery, poverty, and underdevelopment. Liberal academics have lamely acceded to the dogmas of this once-assertive ideology. Marxist view have exerted a stimulus on debates, but could not provide answers to the issues of this discipline. The hopes of development and prosperity a generation ago have evaporated only to be replaced by news of economic malaise, the food crisis, and crushing debt. In the late 1980's geographers addressed Third World environmental issues. Blaikie and Brookfield examined environmental deterioration among elements of the population-environment issue. Lewis and Berry dealt with African environments and resources. Watts and Bassett touched on agrarian and political concerns in West Africa. Adams examined water resources development in Nigeria's Sokoto Valley. Bryceson analyzed the political economy of agriculture in Tanzania. Lawson depicted how government policy bore on agriculture and its regional pattern. Crush detailed the absorption of Swazi labor into the South African economy. Dayal described the deficiency diet of agricultural workers in Bangladesh. Others examined Africa's financial disaster, Japan's trade surplus, and the global population crisis. Nevertheless, the dearth of output on and neglect of Third World issues by human geographers awaits positive research publications.     

International Collaboration in the Compilation of Monographs on the Geography of Individual Socialist Countries

The paper describes an attempt to determine the causes of the development of the present gully network in the steppe and forest-steppe of the European part of the USSR. The authors develop a technique that involves comparing the number of gullies derived from a map of gully density with the number of gullies derived from data on the expansion of the cropland area within the boundaries of the prerevolutionary guberniyas (major civil divisions). The authors conclude from the close correspondence of the two sets of figures that the great majority of gullies could have been formed as a result of the plowing up of the land over the 150 to 300 years of agricultural land use in the study region and can therefore be assumed to have arisen as a result of human activities.     

Political Geography and its Problems

Political geography has no separate standing in the Soviet Union as a research or teaching discipline. An advocate of political geography calls for acceptance of this subject as a full-fledged member of the geographical sciences by outlining some of the problems with which such a discipline might deal in the Soviet Union. It would be concerned with the historical evolution and current changes in the political map of the world and the factors that give rise to both quantitative changes (in territory and boundaries) and qualitative changes (in political systems). Wars, diplomatic actions, dynastic alliances and territorial purchases are listed as some of the factors that result in boundary changes of national states. Revolutions and national liberation movements account for changes in political systems. Heavy emphasis is given to the study of internal political developments that may ultimately result in changes on the political map of the world. Political events throughout the world are analyzed in the light of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and political and social processes in the capitalist and socialist (communist) parts of the world are sharply differentiated.     

World Geography: Organizational and Teaching Strategies

Teaching students to develop an appreciation and understanding of World Geography is a difficult task. This article presents a number of approaches to design effective teaching methods and strategies to stimulate student learning and to develop spatial interconnections. A suggested framework for organization and study of geographic regions of the world is suggested in the article. Atlas exercises, written assignments, course objectives, and seminar projects are designed to improve the understanding of geographic relationships and spatial concepts in World Geography.     

Socialist Geography in England: J. F. Horrabin and a Workers' Economic and Political Geography

This paper examines the life and geographical writings of the English socialist J.F.("Frank") Horrabin (1884–1962) and his attempts to construct a socialist geography. Horrabin was an active socialist in the Labour Party, Fabian Society, and other leftwing groups and very involved in working-class education through the Plebs League and National Council of Labour Colleges. He was also a journalist, cartoonist, and gifted cartographer. His 1923 text An Outline of Economic Geography , which sold in large numbers and was translated into nine other languages, attempted to provide workers with an account of economic (and political and historical) geography that used bourgeois "pure geography" but put it within a socialist and historical–materialist framework. Unlike Germany and some other countries, England did not have a strong Marxist theoretical tradition, and Horrabin's approach does not develop theory (though it did attract the admiration of the German Marxist Karl Wittfogel). Rather, it sets out to be engaged in practical political education. Horrabin's work was developed within a particular context, but his geographical writings (and pioneering political cartography) exemplify one way of linking geography with political practice, and this paper examines these relationships. Many of Horrabin's concerns find echoes in current radical geography, and his work deserves belated recognition and a place in the history of geography.     

Applications of Mathematics to Some Problems in Economic Geography

The author, a staff member of the Institute of Scientific Information of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, discusses some aspects of the use of mathematics in research on settlement geography. He develops a number of methods originated abroad, such as the nearest-neighbor distance and the Zipf rule on city-size distribution, and applies them to the study of patterns of urban settlements and the size and spacing of cities in national and regional systems.