Table Of ContentLcaRjmg
М 1 Я
В 4 ЧАСТЯХ
Part Часть
Москва • 1993
ББК 81.2 Англ
У92
Третью часть учебного пособия «Учим английский» соста
специально подобранные тексты для самостоятельного чтения
позволяет учащимся активно применять полученные знания и базиснш
навыки чтения. I
Книга состоит из двух разделов. Первый посвящен России (в части сЯ
временного периода — истории Советского Союза). При отборе материал
использовались в основном английские источники, составляющие часа
общемировой серии культурно-исторических публикаций, рассчитанньЯ
на детскую аудиторию. * Я
Второй раздел посвящен США. Это сборник рассказов, изложения
живым, сравнительно простым языком, освещающих важнейшие эпизодЯ
истории Америки. По своему характеру предлагаемый Вашему вниманиЯ
материал есть не что иное, как информационный прорыв в досеЛ
закрытую для обычного отечественного читателя область знЯ
ний — объективное, свободное от идеологических искажений освещенЛ
истории американского народа. I
Хотелось бы надеяться, что пособие будет способствовать лучшеиЛ
ознакомлению читателей с мировой историей, пробуждению их интерея
к углубленному изучению не только английского языка, но и всей англоЯ
американской культуры. I
у 4602020102 - 014
Без объявл. ББК 81.2 Ahtj
Я 44(03)—93
ISBN 5-85603-014-1 © Художественное оформлен»
Г. Еремеев, В. Дунько, 1991
© АО «Буклет», 1993
1
RUSSIA
& HER
NEIGHBOURS
I. THE LARGEST COUNTRY
IN THE WORLD
I lie lust thing to remember abou,t the Sqyiet Union, of
winch Russia is the,largest part, is that, it is very big. h
is thy largest,9,ountry on earth, more than twice as big.
| . « Inn.i or the UJS.A., andjt covers about one sixth of all d -
Ilh IiiikI there is. If you take a train from the Russian frontier у "
hi I in rope to the Russian
11>niticr on the Pacific Ocean,
not ill of Japan, you will
ii.ivel lor more than 8 days.
Non may have to live, eat,
nml sleep in the train for
moie than a week. Nowa-
i hi ys, of course, people who
.in in a hurry travel by air.
Much of the w ^you wilje„
PH'.*, ill rough forests, endless
.in u hcs of them. Befor^ you
i time to any real mountains .
you will have travelled more о | 7*v' ! JJeu/rr; ^ \
ili.in 6,400 kilometres, which is 'a great deal farther than
across lh9 Atlantic. The mountains marked on the map
bcl ween European Russia and Siberia — the Urals — are not
very liigh in thepart \vhere the railway crosses them. Before^
reaching the Pacific Ocean fhe railway runs through more
mountainous country; at one point it runs along one of the
world’s biggest lakes, the 640-kilometre-long Lake B^ka.lV(
one of the deepest lakes in the worldy This lake freezes so
hard that in the old days, auriftg the severe winter, trains
used to run across the ice.
5
To the north of the Trans-Siberian railway line are great
stretches of flat, frozen bog, often flooded, where there are
no forests but only marsties, stunted trees and bushes, and
coarse grass. This is called fhe^ijndra. For 8 months of the
year it is very cold indeed, so cold that the ground is
permanently frozen. The roots of the trees cannot grow
downwards, so they grow sideways, like fans, just under the
surface of the ground, which the hot sun‘partly thaws in the
very short summer. Though the winter is so cold, the summer
in Siberia is very warm indeed, but tmly for a short time, (n
the north this is not long enough to maw the ground, which
is always frozen, except on the surface. In this short, hot
season Siberia has the largest and most vicious mosquitoes inf
the world. k-uo- .
A miil|onjvears ago, before there were many men ofl
earth, herds of huge elephant-like creatures, called]
mammoths7re6ftte8l'‘over the^ plains of Siberia. They were
, about 3 metres lugn, with thick coats of dark-brown hair and
curved tusks, perhaps over 3 metres long. There are skeletons
of mammoths in the Natural History Museum in LondonJ
In Siberia in the spring, when the big rivers flood and tear
away huge chinks from their banks, a whole mammoth was
found frozen, with all its flesh and skin and hair preserved by
the frost, which has acted as a natural deep freeze. So we;
know just what they looked like. Today there are great herds
of reindeer, packs of wolves, brown bears, and many animals
which are hunted for their furs.
2. THE SOUTHERN LANDS OF RUSSIA
Lying south of the great forests in the centre of Russia
are iirimense plains. We use a Russian word for parts of
these: the cfiezticzem, which.i|.Russian for ’J.he black
earth’. The ’Ыздж 'earth’ is very ’rich ‘farming’ 'lapd which
grows enough gra^n 'm goo^ yea/stQ,(feeT tfie whole'vast
Soviet Union and piuch of the outside world as wejl. But now
and again a .hot wind comes Jfrom the deserts 'of Asia and
causes sandstorms' and dusfstorVns which destroy the crops,
and then there is famine. There have been many famines in
Russian history, some of them quite recem^j^
The steppes are vast, grassy? treeless plains, without a
single hill. The grass used to grow so high that a man riding a
horse through Jtwas quitehidden.lt was over these plains that
the Tartar horeeme'n galloped, and the early history of Russia
is the story of her struggle agafnsf these invaders from Asia.
I he plains were also the home of the wild and adventurous
Cossacks. In the south-west is the great plain which we now
call the Ukraine, a Russianword meaning the borderland. '
I here are also rich mines of coal, iron, and other minerals,
and big cities where modern industries have grown up.
Through tl^esehuge plains run soipe of the world’s largest
rivers: in the we^the Volga, the Dnieper,” the Don, and, the
Dniester; and in Siberia the Ob, the Lena, the Yenisey, and
many others. For hundreds of years the rivers were the only
sure means of travelling from one part of Rus,sia to another;
so almost all the bi^ Russian cities are built on the bands'of
rivers or on the shores of lakes.
If you look at the map of Russi^i you will see that these
great rivers sometimes come fairly .closUto one anothe^ In .
early times men used to drag tLeir small boats overland from
one river to another, and in this way they could travel very
long distances by boat. Today many of the rivers and lakes
are linked to one another by big canals, and quite large ships
7
and barges can travel from the
I Arctica and the Baltic Sea in
the north right across Russia
to the Black Sea and the
Caspian Sea in the south. The
Caucasus region, which lies
between the Black Sea and the
great inland Caspian Sea, Jis
very mountainous. The hig
hest mountain, Mt. Elbruz
(5,647 metres), is over four
times higher than the highest
mountain in Britain. Much
further east, along the borders of China, there are even
higher mountains, several being over 7,000 metres. Щ
The Caspian Sea is the largest inland sea in the world. It
lies very low, about 30 metres below the level of the sea, and
it is about as big as the whole of the British Isles. Millions of
years ago it was even larger, and used to cover a great part of
Central Asia. In the very hot, flat, salty deserts that now lie
round it, there are fossil shells from sea-creatures which once
lived there when all this land was water. Also there are many!
oil veils, for oil is formed from the bodies , of sea animals;
which have been buried for hundreds of thousands of years.'
East of the Caspian Sea there are deserts and desolate
steppes, so dry that there is no grass. Many of the deserts
have terrible names, such as ’The Hungry Steppe’ or ’The ,
Plains of Misfortune’, because travellers in old days suffered
and often died for lack of any water. Today canals are being
built to bring water to these dry lands.
There is almost every kind of country in Russia, which is 3
not surprising when you remember how much of the world it
covers. There is land in the north which is always frozen, and
land in the south where is never any frost. There are wide
rivers, bogs, marshes, and lakes, and there are deserts with ]
almost no water. There are enormous stretches of flat plain,!
and there are ranges of high mountains. There are great
forests and stretches of rich farmland. There is hardly any
crop or any kind of mineral which cannot be found
somewhere in Russia.
8
V THE PEOPLES OF THE SOVIET UNION
here are about 270 million people altogether in the
USSR, and only about two-thirds of these are true
Russians. The next biggest group is the Ukrainians,
who live in south-western Russia. There are about 45 million
Ukrainians, and they speak a language very much like
Russian. The capital of the Ukraine is Kiev, once the capital
of all Russia. There is a group of people called White
К nssians, who live in White Russia, just north of the Ukraine,
and also speak a language very like Russian. They number
about 8 million, and their capital is Minsk. But there are
some peoples in western part of the USSR who are quite
different from the Russians. The Moldavians, for instance,
live in country on the Black Sea that used to be part of
Rumania, and they still speak Rumanian.
The Georgians of the Caucasus mountains in the south of
are mostly tall, hook-nosed people who walk very proudly.
I hey are famous for their folk-dancing and singing. Troops
of them often come to other countries to dance and sing,
wearing their own national dress, with fur hats, and cartridge
belts crossed over their chests.
9
The people of Siberia live in a part of Russian federati®
which is nearly twice as big as the United States of Amen®
There are very few people compared with western part®
Russian federation, but a great many groups. The YakiJB
for instance, are quite a small group living in a vast arealn
eastern Siberia. Their country is very cold. The Yakuts b r^|
cattle and horses, and in the north they breed and hi®
reindeer. They also hunt and trap animals for their furs, afl
in the summer they Fish. In the old days many of them lived
in skin tents in the summer, and in the winter in log barn
which they shared with their animals. . !
4. THE CITY OF NOVGOROD
bout a thousand years ago, in a monastery in the
depths of the great Russian forests, an old monk sat
writing the first history of the Russian people. He
i nllcd it «The Chronicle of Times Past», but we know it as
и I In- Chronicle of Nestor». In those long-ago days few
people could read and write, so Nestor had to rely on the
memory of old men in the villages and on stories which had
been handed down from father to son stories like those of
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which are
not exactly true but which have some truth in them.
Therefore old Nestor’s Chronicle was not true history;
indeed some learned men say that it is nothing more than
n story. But whether it is true or not, it tells us something
.i bout a time of darkness and confusion when men did very
much they pleased, and there was no law to make them keep
Ihe peace.
Before Nestor’s time the Russian states were not united,
and they were continually having to fight against the tribes of
Ihe steppes or the pirates of the Baltic, who used to raid the
Russians lands, destroy the cities, and go back to their own
lands with their booty of goods and slaves. The cities were
easily destroyed for, except for a few buildings of stone,
usually churches, they were made of wood. The biggest cities
were Novgorod in the north and Kiev in the south. Both were
cities of merchants, built on the great river-road which led
from the Baltic to the Black Sea and Constantinople. This
trade route has sometimes been called the amber road, for the
merchants carried amber from the shores of the Baltic Sea
and sold it at a high price in Constantinople and the
Mediterranean lands.
n
