The priority task of the Russian Empire, in order to successfully advance into the depths of the Kazakh steppes, was a cartographic study. The greatest contribution to the topographic study of the territory of Kazakhstan was made by officers of the Military Topographic Depot and members of the Russian Geographical Society. In the process of studying the history of Kazakhstan in modern times, the task of identifying, describing and further using cartographic sources inevitably arises. In order to successfully study the spatial aspects of the historical process, orienting in a huge number of maps of all kinds and types, as well as systematization and storage, the article analyzes classification problems and provides a brief overview of Russian cartographic materials on the history of Kazakhstan in the ХVIIIth and ХIХ th centuries, from the collection of documents collected during the study. The classification should satisfy the logical requirement of the study. The basis for the classification of identified old maps was laid down the main features: territorial, chronological, thematic, scale, purpose and content. In this case, first of all, the dominant feature of the map was taken into account and the classification was carried out according to it, additional features were secondary and filled the classification.