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On of the most heartening developments since the end of the cold war has been return of the nations of Central Europe as equal partners and friends. Today, the countries of this region are back on the political map, with their own distinctive voices, and are no longer the object of someone else's ambitions, Their choice isclear: to be part of the two greatest engines of security and prosperity – NATO and the European Union. We must respond to this desire. An open Europe cannot be based on closed institutions. There can be no durable order if the Continent remains divided between a prosperous, self-confident West and a stagnant, frustrated East.

These are the moral and political roots of last year's decision to invite the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland into NATO.After a process of thorough preparation, we expect them to be full members of the alliance by the time of our Washington Summit. Thisevent will signal to the world that these countries' journey backto Europe is complete. For others, this journey will be longer, yet they too have made great headway. Indeed, the decision by NATO to open its doors has led many countries in Central and Eastern Europe to accelerate their political, economic and military reforms. It has also encouraged them to bury old enmities and establish good neighbourly relations.

Moreover, NATO’s opening to Central and Eastern Europe is nothappening in a vacuum. NATO’s other initiatives – the Partnership for Peace program, the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, the NATO/Russian Founding Act, the NATO/Ukraine Charter and our dialogue with six countries from the Mediterranean – have created a powerful momentum for Continent-wide security cooperation. Together, these initiatives have united almost all the nations in the Euro-Atlantic area around a common security standard. They have turned joint military exercises and political consultations between NATO and partners into regular features of today's Europe.

This cooperative momentum has enabled our relationship with Russia to make a quantum leap. With the NATO/Russia Founding Act and the NATO/Russia Permanent Joint Council, we have created the right mechanisms for political consultation on a wide range of issues. Military cooperation is accelerating as well, enabling us to enrich our relationship both in scope and substance – from preventing proliferation to managing regional crises.At a time of uncertainty in Russia, it is especially important thatwe build on the momentum of that NATO/Russia relationship andfill it with substantive content. A stable and democratic Russiaremains vital for a cooperative security order in Europe. Thecooperative momentum created by our major institutions must be extended even further. It must also take root in those regions for which the end of communism did not simply mean liberation, but also created new uncertainty and fear.

In Bosnia, NATO and its partner nations have demonstrated that they can have a positive impact on a regional crisis. By making the security of the Balkans our concern, we have finally destroyed the myth that outside involvement can never make a difference in this conflict-prone region. By uniting different nations behind a common strategy, we broke the fateful cycle of powers supporting their client states in the Balkans. In exercising these ghosts, we also dispelled the notion that NATO confined to the role of a bystander. The NATO-led operation Bosnia is a unique and unprecedented international coalition. Soldiers from over 30 countries are serving on the side of peace.

This spirit of cooperation bodes well for the future. Together, NATO and its partners are pushing Bosnia toward a sustainable peace. We are still a long way from true reconciliation. But the overall trends are encouraging. And we will stay the course.

Unfortunately, events are less encouraging in Kosovo, where Belgrade's oppressive policies have created a humanitarian and political crisis, NATO stands ready to support international diplomacy to find a lasting political solution in Kosovo – a solution that meets the aspirations of the Kosovar Albanian population within the unity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. NATOhas completed planning for a range of military options which give the alliance's politica1 leaders great flexibility in the implementation of military actions, should they be required. NATO is ready to act. NATO has also undertaken major efforts to stabilize the situation in neighboring countries. Both Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia have made use of the consultation mechanisms provided by the Partnership for Peace. We have stepped up our military assistance to both countries and recently held exercises on their territories.

In Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, I once met an 87-year-old man. He told me that he had lived his entire life in the same place, yet at the same time he had lived in seven different countries. This is the other, darker side of Europe. To complete Europe's post-cold war consolidation, we need engagement. And we need a dynamic transatlantic community. This transatlantic community can create irresistible momentum only if it stands together. This has been a key lesson of the 20th century. In April, when the alliance celebrates its 50th anniversary at the Washington Summit, we will demonstrate that the lesson of transatlantic unity will also guide our security state strategies in the 21st century.

(Javier Solana, Time)

I. Find English equivalent for the following:

- быть полноправным членом;

- быстрое распространение;

- улаживать конфликт;

- всеобщая тенденция;

- порядок безопасности в Европе;

- сторонний наблюдатель;

- отвечать чаяниям;

- проводить учения;

- долговременный мир;

- применение военных действий.

II. Answer the questions:

1. What is the most heartening development since the end of the cold war?

2. What are two main engines of security and prosperity in Solana’s opinion? Do you agree with his point of view? Why?

3. What has the NATO’s decision led many countries to do?

4. What are the other NATO’s initiatives?

5. What has the cooperation between Russia and NATO brought to both sides?

6. What is the NATO’s role in the Balkans?

7. What is happening in Kosovo?

8. What has a key lesson of the 20^th century been?

III. Say what is true and what is false. Correct the false sentences:

1.Today countries of this region are back on the political map, with their own distinctive voices, and are no longer the object of someone else’s ambitions.

2. An open Europe should be based on open institution.

3. With the NATO/Russia Founding Act and the NATO/Russian Permanent Joint Council, we have created the right mechanisms for political consultation on some issues.

4. But military cooperation can not enrich our relationship either in scope or substance.

5. The NATO-led operation in Bosnia is a common international coalition.

6. We have slowed down the military assistance to both countries and refused to hold exercises on their territories.

IY. Find a word or phrase in the text which is similar in meaning to the following:

- a condition in which a person or community is doing well economically and has a good standard of living;

- to feel upset and angry;

- a feeling of anger or hatred for a person that you strongly disagree with;

- to give the opportunity to do something;

- rapid increase in number;

- crucial;

- to be involved with only that thing and nothing else;

- a process in which two people, or two groups of people become friendly again after they have quarreled;

- to increase the speed, amount or extent of something.

Y. Express the meaning of the following words and phrases:

- to make a quantum leap;

- oppressive policies;

- to meet the aspiration;

- conflict-prone region;

- bystander;

- flexibility.

YI. Demonstrate the meaning of the following words and expressions in sentences of your own:

- prosperity;

- self-confident;

- to be complete;

- enmity;

- scope;

- proliferation;

- to confine to;

- implementation;

- to step up.

YII. Topics for discussion:

1. What is NATO without cold war for?

2. Russia’s membership in NATO.

UNIT 5

FEMINIST WHO FIGHTS FOR THE BOYS

In the past few years, I have become very disillusioned with feminism. In fact, I found myself more and more uncomfortable with calling myself a feminist, which is strange because feminism has been incredibly important to me; it was my intellectual and political formation. Yet after 20 years of feeling that it was a struggle growing up as a girl andfighting hard for women 's rights, I realised that I no longer accepted the feminist way of seeing the world. It dawned on me that I felt more concerned about what was happening to boys and men.

What had changed? The first thing that made huge number of me question my beliefs was the recession of the early 1990s, when men lost their jobs. Economic patterns had changed and my partner, John, had a particularly hard time. He was running a company with someone who had a prolonged illness and eventually died. The death was devastating for John and was accompanied by tough times at work. Then his father died, too, and he was left grappling with problems in the business and grief for his dad and a friend. On top of all that he was also trying to be a good father to our two children and contribute at home.

It was a very difficult time for all of us and during it, I felt that feminism just didn't have anything to say to me. Feminists were going on and on about work and childcare and average rates of pay. Their refrain was that women should be able to have it all, that they still needed special pleading. "Why won't men pull their weight?" they moaned. "Why do women have to do all the work?" But this just didn't ring true any more. Around me, I saw fathers who were very hands-on and trying just as hard as women to work and be good parents. These men were making huge changes but they were being given little credit for their efforts. No wonder that last week academic research was published showing that contemporary fathers feel under enormous strain.

These days, I am more worried about what the future holds for my son than for my daughter. She will be a working woman and will also have the choice of becoming a mother. But my son, Carl, 14, and his friends face a much more uncertain future. Boys are doing significantly less well at school than girls. The old roles are gone and my son and his peers are thrashing around in a new world in which they feel demoralised, the second sex.

Their feelings are not surprising. Modern woman has an inbuilt moral superiority from which men are excluded: she works, has her family, does everything in the home. By contrast, men are depicted as useless, redundant prats who can't even manage to do the washing up.

From observing my son and his friends, I see that boys have lost their confidence. Their future is complex and uncertain, their role models muddled: new lad or new man? The old male-dominated career structures are ceasing to exist – there is no guarantee that today's boys will leave school and work to provide for a family. And, more than anything, boys fear humiliation. To expose themselves to the risk of failure is a real problem for boys. Rather than trying, it is easier for them to act indifferent, nonchalant and hostile.

Today's economy is gender blind. Women are no longer discriminated against and men do not get preferential treatment. In fact, there's some evidence that it is the other way round. Today's girls are buoyed up by a tremendous sense that whatever they do is new and positive – the girl power syndrome.

My son and his friends hear feminists saying girls "need extra support and encouragement and positive feedback". Then they look around and see incredibly together, confident girls doing much better than they are at school. Of course they think: "Hey, hang on. Look at how girls get all this extra support and encouragement and positive feedback. But we don't. That's sexist." If I point out that women have been dominated by men for centuries they don't care: nothing will shake these teenage boys frown their belief that sexism now operate against them. I have heard my son and his friends say that they think that feminism is sexist. Some women might think this is typical of a kind of laddishness but I think things have changed so much that the boys have a point.

As a mother I am worried about the pressures on my son's generation. They are, I think, tremendously at risk. Boys, not girls, get picked on by gangs of other boys; and it is boys who are much more prone to depression, anxiety and suicide. What bothers me is the contempt with which feminists treat men and boys. "What woman in her right mind would want to take one of these boys into her home?" asked Sue Slipman when she was director of the National Council for One Parent Families. Typical. If that wasn't bad enough, Bea Campbell, a leading feminist said: "What feminists, like women in general, have longed for from fathers is something so simple and elusive – cooperation."

In other words, feminists want men to have a walk-on role! Father can be chief bottle washer and pram pusher but feminists are reluctant to admit they might bring something positive to parenting, too.

At this point I have a confession. With my own children, I realised it wasn't that my partner was reluctant to help, but that I was reluctant to let him. I was trying to fulfil all the roles: I wanted to work but also to be in the central place in the home. Eventually, John said: "I don't want you hovering, trying to control from a distance. Let me do it my way."

I think I am typical. It's easy for feminists to say that men come home and put their feet up. The truth is women are often too controlling to let men pull their weight.

Just as women changed dramatically in the 1970s, which had enormous implications for the whole of society, so men are changing themselves in the l990s. If you look at EastEnders or books such as Nick Hornby's About a Boy, you see men transforming themselves, becoming emotionally in touch and concerned about becoming proper fathers.

Men have begun to transform themselves. Just as we women started to think about our mothers, because a lot of feminism came from a reaction to them, so men are thinking: "I'm not going to be like my father. I'm going to have a better relationship with my kids." But whereas men were generous to women during the transition, women are being horrendously ungenerous to men. I think women are worried that men might manage too well: so well that we will be made redundant.

(Rosalind Coward, G ardian)

I. Find English equivalent for the following;

- в довершение всего;

- работать наравне с кем-то;

- сверстник;

- врожденное моральное превосходство;

- подвергать себя риску;

- не делать различия между женщиной и мужчиной;

- иметь основания;

- роль без слов.

II. Answer the questions:

1. Why did the author find herself uncomfortable with calling herself a feminist?

2. What made her question her beliefs? Why?

3. What was the feminists’ refrain?

4. Why do contemporary fathers feel under emotional strain?

5. Why is the author worried about her son’s future more then for her daughter’s one?

6. What do feminists want?

7. What was the author’s experience as a mother and a wife?

8. Why are women ungenerous to men?

III. Say what is true and what is false. Correct the false sentence.

1. It dawned on me that I felt more concerned about happening to the old.

2. On top of all he was trying to be a good father to our two children and contribute at home.

3. Boys are doing significantly less well at school then girls.

4. Today’s girls are buoyed up by a tremendous sense that whatever they do is new and positive.

5. As a mother I don’t care much about the pressure on my son’s generation.

6. It is not easy for feminists to say that men come home and put their feet up.

7. Women are sceptical that men might manage too well: so well that they will be made redundant.

IY. Find a word or phrase in the text which is similar in meaning to the following:

- a period of time when the economy of a country becomes much less successful and more people becoming unemployed;

- a state of worry and tension caused by a situation that severely tests your mental and physical powers;

- being no longer needed, because it’s job is being done by something else;

- to have a tendency to be affected by something;

- to want something very much;

- something that is suggested or implied by a particular situation.

Y. Express the meaning of the following words and phrases:

- to be disillusioned;

- to downed on somebody;

- to pull one’s weight;

- to be hands on;

- peers;

- nonchalant;

- to be gender blind;

- a walk-on role.

YI. Demonstrate the meaning of the following words and expressions in sentences of your own:

- to become disillusioned;

- devastating;

- to thrash around;

- to muddle;

- humiliation;

- to expose;

- feedback;

- elusive;

- to be reluctant;

- implication.

YII. Topics for discussion:

1. Women’s role in the society, in the family.

2. Position of women in different social communities.

UNIT 6

I’M BORED OF PEDANTIC GRAMMARIANS

OH GOD, I thought, not this one again. The publishers of the new Collins Dictionary of English have been trying to whip up a bit of publicity by asking a hundred or so celebrities and authors to nominate current abuses of the English language. The result, of course, was a positive feast of change-and-decay- in-all-around-I-see, as those well- known commentators on linguistic change Terry Waite, Bob Monk- house and Sue Lawley stood up to protect the poor language hem the barbarians at the gate.

Unfortunately, the ability of the strangely-assorted masses to opine about linguistic correctness was severely undermined by the fact that Collins asked them to take a spelling test of some slightly tricky English words, such as supersede, resuscitate, consensus and so on. Only four people got full marks – one the novelist Shena Mackay, who, I must say, I had always thought of as a woman to have on your side in a spelling bee. Individual users, such as poor old John Prescott, came in for a severe bashing for such heinous offences as saying "sceptre" when he meant "spectre" and speaking in rambling sentences, as most people do. Split infinitives were mentioned a great deal, and the use of words such as "night-mare", as in "I've just had a nightmare of an afternoon", described as deplorable and inappropriate exaggeration. Someone complained about Frank Dobson saying "different to" rather than "different from"; someone else about the Prime Minister using nouns as verbs, as in "tasking". Another commentator thought that the use of the expression "bored of" rather than "bored with" was a complete disgrace, not quite seeing that the ~ logical, though rather pissy expression ought to be "bore by".

I can't think that this really needs to be said again, but this is all the most total rubbish. Of course, we all have our prejudices about linguistic use; personally, I dislike the use of the word "pristine" to mean "clean", or "jejune" to mean "childish", while seeing that it's a bit of a lost battle. And other people's views on language always seem either prissy – just fancy caring that everyone now says "bored of" – or slack I have no particular opinion about "different to" or "different from", but the now common American usage "different than" makes me wince.

And certainly it isn't hard to come up with some really revolting abuse; the other day, on a pompous American wildlife programme on the telly, I heard someone say "Domestic animals face challenges utterly unique than those presented to their wild cousins." But really – how often does this need to be said? – language changes. It doesn't get worse or better; it just changes. And the worst abuses spring not from pristine ignorance, but from some idiot who vaguely knows something about grammar and prefers to say "A friend has invited my wife and I to dinner" and who complains volubly about the rare and frankly abstruse question of the split infinitive. What's wrong with "nightmare"?

It's a bit banal, I see that, but people pick it up and use it because it's a vivid word. Other targets of complaint were quite simply about the way the English language has always grown. If Tony Blair is wrong to shift the word "task" from one part of speech to another, then so is every great writer in English; when Shakespeare made Cleopatra say that she would be "window'd in great Rome", he didn't worry for a moment that the word "window" is now and ever shall be a noun, understanding that English structures are not the same as Latin ones.

The whole history of the English language is a history of the simplification of grammatical structures. English nouns used to have genders, like French; the accusative whom used to have a parallel form in which, and I dare say there were plenty of people around to complain that things were going to the dogs when it started to disappear. And I wonder if a lot of the targets of complaints here serve to identify the next stage of simplification. For instance, one respondent complained about the use of the expression "20 pound", saying that it was illiterate not to say "pounds". Well, perhaps for the moment it is, but it's already common in black and American speech for plurals to be dropped after a number, as in "Five bag".

God save us from self-appointed guardians of the language, whose strictures on correctness serve mainly to introduce spectacularly ludicrous new errors, who have a vague belief that it is somehow wrong to begin a sentence with "and" or end one with a preposition, who stand in the way of ordinary, vivid speech and writing. The users 'of English can look after it perfectly well. As for those maiden-aunts "rules" deriving from 18th-century Latin grammarians – well, frankly, I'm just bored of them.

(Philip Hensner, Independent)

I. Find English equivalents for the following:

- привлечь внимание;

- отвратительный;

- неправильное употребление;

- являться результатом чего-либо;

- трудный для понимания;

- род;

- деградировать;

- винительный падеж.

II. Answer the questions:

1. What have the publishers of the new Collins Dictionary of English been trying to do? Why?

2. What were the participants asked to do?

3. Have all the participants got the full marks?

4. What linguistic errors has the author mentioned?

5. What’s wrong about the phrase in American wildlife programme?

6. In what way has the English language developed?

7. What do people around complain of?

8. What is common in black and American speech?

III. Say what is true and what is false. Correct the false sentences:

1. The publishers of the new Collins Dictionary of English have been trying to whip up publicity by asking a hundred or so celebrities and authors to nominate current abuses of the English language.

2. Only six people got full marks - one of them novelist John Prescott.

3. Someone complained about Frank Dobson saying «different to» rather than «different from».

4. Some of us have our prejudices about linguistic use.

5. Now common American usage «different than» makes me wince.

6. Other targets of complaint were quite simply about the way the English language has always grown.

7. The whole history of the English language is a history of the complication.

IY. Find a word or phrase in the text which is similar in the meaning to he following:

- information or action intended to attract the public attention to someone

or something;

- a large number of a particular type of thing;

- someone who behaves in a rough and bad-mannered way;

- to become conscious again;

- unpleasant to see or to smell so that you fell disgusted.

Y. Express the meaning of the following words and phrases:

- celebrity;

- deplorable;

- prejudice;

- disgrace;

- pompous;

- ignorance;

YI. Demonstrate the meaning f the following words and expressions in the sentences of your own:

- to whip up;

- celebrity;

- heinous;

- disgrace;

- slack;

- ignorance;

- prejudice;

- abstruse;

- go to the dogs.

YII. Topics for discussion.

1. Do you agree the language can’t get worse or better?

2. What do you think about modern Russian language?

UNIT 7

DOWN AND OUT AT OXBRIDGE

When I was a small child living in Russia and Poland, there were only three places in Britain I had ever heard of – London, of course, and Oxford and Cambridge. Even today, if one asks an educated person anywhere in the world to name the first university that comes to mind, the answer is perhaps as likely to be Oxford or Cambridge as Harvard or Berkeley. But how much longer can Britain hope to keep the preeminent position it won in the academic world in the 17th century and has managed to hold ever since?

The answer depends largely on the Government's response to the report published yesterday by the Bett committee on academic salaries and university funding. If the Government broadly accepts the Bett report's financial analysis of the university crisis and tells the Treasury to find enough new money for an increase of at least 20 per cent in the level of academic pay, there is a reasonable chance that Britain will be able to hang on to some of the world's leading centres of academic excellence. If, on the other hand, the Government pleads lack of money and demands that the universities solve their problems from within their existing budgets, then British higher education will probably be doomed.

It is simply impossible to imagine that professors who are recognised authorities in their fields can continue to accept lower pay than schoolmasters, local authority planning officials and junior reporters on The Times. Something will have to give. And if there is no more money, what gives will undoubtedly be the quality of the people working in universities. Why one earth should a professor of economics at the LSE earn a quarter the salary of the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury? It is hardly surprising that the number of LSE students starting PhD courses in economics this year has fallen to zero.

Our great universities will not, of course, disappear simply because they lose their best staff. They will continue to function, with teachers and researchers of lower distinction. The world will still remember nostalgically that Newton and Keynes lived in Cambridge and that modern physics and economics were developed at Glasgow by William Kelvin and Adam Smith. But in terms of the great discoveries of the future, the top British institutions will be so completely outclassed by their richer American rivals that, in the next century, the word "university" will no more be considered synonymous with Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh or London than it is today with Pisa, Salamanca or Prague.

Why should this matter? Great universities are a hallmark of civilisation. There is nothing more worthwhile for a society than - to support brilliant scholars who can advance knowledge and inspire curiosity among the young. But such abstractions are dismissed as sentimental twaddle by the unholy alliance of Thatcherite materialists egalitarians which has been doing its best to destroy all intellectual excellence in Britain, from universities and theatres to the broadcasting bodies and museums.

There are, however, other reasons for worrying about the fate of the great universities that even the crass materialists cannot ignore. The universities are an enormous source of economic wealth for the nation – far more important in the long run than oil reserves, deregulated labour markets or lightly taxed banks.: Elite universities are vitally important to a modern economy partly because their scientific work is the most reliable basis for the design and creation of valuable new products.

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