ABSTRACT
The Soviet Unions state monopoly of civil aviation, was the worlds largest civil airline in terms of the mileage of its scheduled routes and numbers of passengers carried. One of the primary missions of the Soviets civil aviation was to use aerial photography as a means of collecting accurate information regarding the USSRs terrain. The Soviets use of aerial photographs in civilian topographic surveying and mapping began before the First World War. Russian and Western observers alike agreed in concluding that the state airline had played a significant role in modernizing the Russian empires social and economic system, in strengthening the centralized authority of the Soviet leadership, and in legitimizing its authority in the eyes of the USSRs Russian and non-Russian citizens. Topographic surveys by ground crews are difficult, time-consuming and very costly, and topographic surveying by means of photogrammetry and metric or mapping cameras was an obvious if only partially effective alternative.
