The Soviets’ secret map of Seattle tells a lot about us

I know that you have not heard enough about the Russians lately, so let's dredge up some stuff from the Cold War! The map has certain locations marked as points of interest, but the descriptions of the places don't match what was there at the time. Or did they?

SEATTLE TIMES SOURCE

This 1976 map of Seattle is not the kind you would have bought at a gas station. No, this is a secret map put together by the Military Topographic Directorate of the General Staff of the Soviet Army. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) was fond of terms like “directorate.”

This map was part of a massive Cold War effort by the Soviets. Over five decades — beginning with World War II until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 — it produced more than a million detailed maps of cities and places around the world.

You could call the secret 1976 map “the Soviet of Seattle,” a not-so-joking reference to the “Soviet of Washington” title reflecting this state’s (meaning Seattle’s) lefty politics as distinguished from the rest of the United States.

The Seattle map marks one spot, No. 29, on the shores of Salmon Bay in Ballard, as “Explosion mechanisms and radio electronic devices.” An accompanying text says there is a factory there that produces “explosive devices for nuclear arms.”

No. 29 is placed where 24th Avenue Northwest dead-ends at the bay, now the location of the Stimson Marina. What did the Soviets know? Tom Bayley, president of C.D. Stimson, has a guess. “The Honeywell marine division pretty much occupied that whole property back in the day,” he says. “Who knows what they were building?” A May 4, 1983, Seattle Times story about Honeywell Marine Systems Division moving from Ballard to the Mukilteo area says the company is a prime contractor for the U.S. Navy’s lightweight torpedoes, working on homing systems. The work was important enough that the facility had “to maintain security,” the story says.

The re-entry sphere, with camera ports, from the Zenit spy satellite that the Soviets began using in the early 1960s to photograph various locations — maybe even Seattle. The sphere now is a tourist attraction at the Russian.

Then there is the astonishing No. 26 on the Bellevue portion of the map, bounded by Bellevue Way Northeast to the west, Northeast Sixth Street to the north, 108th Avenue Northeast to the east, and Northeast Fourth Street to the south. It’s abbreviated as “atom,” most likely an adjective, which, depending on the noun it went with, could stand for factory, lab or plant, explains Professor Galya Diment, a native Russian speaker with the University of Washington’s Slavic Languages & Literatures department. She translated portions of the “spravka,” text accompanying the map. It says No. 26 is a “nuclear factory which produces nuclear fuel.”

Please read the SOURCE ARTICLE to find out more!

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The Russians are the Russians, both good and bad, it looks like a map from a old KGB source for action to be taken.

a reply to: seattlerat

Really cool story, thank you for posting this...I imagine they and others have similar maps for the entire country.

A million maps! Nowadays they just need to go on Google..

originally posted by: Misterlondon
A million maps! Nowadays they just need to go on Google..

But Google Maps isn't going to tell you that the weapons-grade nerve gas we officially don't have is being stored in the ordinary-looking house just down the block from you.

a reply to: seattlerat

Apparently much of the information on the map(s) was obtained by spies within the United States. According to the source material some witnesses that had worked at some of those places vouch for the accuracy of some of the secret information on that Seattle map.

I would love to see some original photos taken by those Russian spy satellites that were used in that old mapping program. I bet they were quite crude and I imagine it took some considerable skill and a massive budget to come up with such beautifully detailed maps.

Very cool story, brings back oddly nostalgic memories of hiding under my desk at school for bombing drills.

a reply to: seattlerat

WOW that is awesome and scary at the same time. Cool find

a reply to: seattlerat

You could call the secret 1976 map “the Soviet of Seattle,” a not-so-joking reference to the “Soviet of Washington” title reflecting this state’s (meaning Seattle’s) lefty politics as distinguished from the rest of the United States.

Absolutely wrong. The word "soviet" means "congress." The Washington Soviet would mean the Washington Statehouse.

originally posted by: DJW001
a reply to: seattlerat

You could call the secret 1976 map “the Soviet of Seattle,” a not-so-joking reference to the “Soviet of Washington” title reflecting this state’s (meaning Seattle’s) lefty politics as distinguished from the rest of the United States.

Absolutely wrong. The word "soviet" means "congress." The Washington Soviet would mean the Washington Statehouse.

You mean, the Soviet of Washington would mean the Statehouse of Washington, don't you? Nobody ever said "the Washington Soviet".

Maybe you were thinking in your native Russian and got your wires crossed?

Also, you said it means Congress. So which is it, "congress" or "statehouse"?



Also, here is this in case you did not look at every link within every link like I did 😜
Communism made a larger impact on Washington than almost any other state. “There are forty-seven states in the Union, and the Soviet of Washington,” Postmaster General James Farley joked in 1936. The remark, for all its exaggeration, had some foundation.

a reply to: seattlerat

Thank you for sharing this. This is fantastic. I kind of like living in the Soviet America. It feels dangerous, sexy, exotic, adventurous, like anything could happen... Hmmm is that guy over there a spy? Probably. That's just how it is living in Soviet Washington.

That's why I never leave home without my poisonous dart firing wristwatch. It keeps me safe from all the Soviet spies. I actually fired the dart it came with a long time ago when I wanted to kill a spider on my ceiling but was too lazy to get up. I never could find the dart, and the company that makes them went out of business when the cold war ended, so it's basically impossible to buy a refill...

However, the chronometer is quite useful for ensuring that I do not miss the train, which would result in me losing my job, which would result in me being evicted, which would result in me being homeless... I heard that a lot of so called homeless are actually Soviet spies, and that is a world I do not want to be involved in.

Such is life in Soviet Washington, which is why I never leave home without my poison dart firing wristwatch, in order to protect me from the Russian Spies.