Abstract <p>Undisturbed, primarily unploughed chernozems are gaining increasing scientific and applied importance as they provide essential benchmarks for assessing the widespread anthropogenic transformation of these soils. These pristine soils serve as natural references for evaluating both degradation and improvement in cultivated analogues, while also advancing our understanding of natural soil cover patterns. This is particularly relevant for the forest–steppe territories of the East European Plain, where human economic activity has most extensively altered the soil cover. We conducted large-scale soil mapping across three automorphic, never-ploughed hayland and pasture sites in the Central Russian Upland, assessing soil property variability, diversity, and soil cover pattern parameters. Our analysis made it possible to reveal a clear dependence of diversity assessments on taxonomic level: when transitioning from soil types to subtypes and kinds, not only diversity indices increase, but site rankings change accordingly. The soil cover across all study sites consists of chernozems (Haplic Chernozems) and clayey–illuvial chernozems (Luvic Chernozems), representing what appears to be a natural soil cover pattern in meadow–steppe areas of the southern Central Russian Upland forest–steppe.</p>