Sometimes fact IS funnier than fiction. According to an article in the New York TIMES, for more than 50 years authorities in the Soviet Union have been deliberately sabotaging their own maps of the Soviet countryside. Rivers, bridges, cities and coastlines have all been shown in wrong locations on maps or deliberately drawn incorrectly. Distance scales have been an absolute joke. Soviet theory, apparently, was that these errors made these maps useless to spies, invading armies, and the navigators of enemy bombers. Unfortunately, though, the maps were also pretty much useless to tourists and Soviet citizens.

We can draw two conclusions from this little piece of news. First of all it reveals to us the wall of fear which the Soviets have built around themselves over the last half century. We w…