VII. Speak on the Soviet Union's achievements in different spheres of life. Make use of the text and the additional passages given in Exercises V, VI. 2 страница

She was sent to the neighbouring republic of Uzbekistan to continue her education. There, in Tashkent, under a decree signed by Lenin, the first state university in Central Asia had been opened in 1920. Tajibayeva joined its geological department.

She was in Tashkent when the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 broke out. She attended lectures in the morning and nursed the wounded in the hospitals at night.

In 1943 Patchaim Tajibayeva graduated from the University with honours. She was thinking of returning home, when the head of her department advised her to take a post-graduate course.

She defended her dissertation a year after the war ended.

In 1946, she returned to Alma-Ata, the first Kazakh woman Candidate of Geological and Mineral Sciences.

By that time new industrial enterprises and big research centres had sprung up in the republic, and the national Academy of Sciences was being set up. Tajibayeva was offered work in one of the future academic institutions, the Institute of Geology.

She was one of the first in the Soviet Union to employ new methods of mineral analysis - known as refined physical methods, - she laid the foundations in Kazakhstan for the national school of lithology, and headed a series of practical experiments being done in the republic connected with study of the earth's crust.

Thus, step by step, began the ascent to. the heights of geological science.

In 1960 she defended her dissertation for a Doctor's degree, and in 1967 was elected corresponding member of the Kazakhstan Academy of Sciences.

(From "Soviet Land", 1977)

A GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF PEOPLES

The nationalities inhabiting the Soviet Union include some numbering tens of millions and also some very small ethnic groups consisting of a few thousand or only a few hundred people.

All the peoples in the Soviet Union whether their number be large or small, have equal rights and opportunities for complete economic and cultural development. This is guaranteed by the Constitution of the USSR and confirmed by the history of the Soviet state from its inception.

All the peoples of the Soviet Union play an active part in the political, economic and cultural life of the country as a whole, and this exerts a strong influence in bringing them closer together to work for a common purpose. Many peoples whose level of economic and cultural development in the past was extremely low acquired a written language of their own only in the Soviet period. National literature and art are successfully developing and the traditions of national life are being carefully preserved.

What has taken place in the period of more than half a century since the Soviet state was formed has confirmed Lenin's view that the old feuds between the peoples would disappear and that all the peoples of the Soviet Union would achieve politically, economically and spiritually a completely new multi-national unity.

RUSSIA: A FREE UNION OF FREE NATIONS

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) is one of the fifteen sovereign Soviet socialist states which have voluntarily joined together to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. All of them enjoy absolutely equal rights in the political and economic

system of the USSR and in cultural life. But in contrast to the other republics the RSFSR has a federative structure. The principle of socialist federalism on which the republic was created was later made the basis of the national and state structure of the whole country.

The emblem, of the RSFSR - the hammer and sickle surrounded by ears of wheat - indicates' that the welfare of the republic lies in the fields and in the workshops. Its Constitution introduced new principles in determining the relationships between the peoples constituting the new republic. These were the unqualified recognition of the equality of all nations, peoples and races; the right of the workers and peasants of each nation independently to choose their path of developing; the recognition of the sovereignty of each people and wide democracy in solving matters of the state.

At the moment the RSFSR contains sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous regions and ten autonomous areas. Their people have received not only a name on - the political map of the country and not only the attributes of autonomy. The listing of their rights takes up several pages in the constitutions of the autonomous republics. Each of them has own higher organs of power - the Supreme Soviet and its Presidium, its government and its Supreme court. Each approves its budget and, in accordance with the legislation of the whole country, its state and local taxes. Each administers the industrial and agricultural enterprises on its territory, directs housing and communal construction, the health services, social maintenance, education...

And each, on an equal footing, participates in the administration of the whole state. Although differing greatly in territory and population, they elect an equal number of deputies - eleven from each to one of the chambers of the Soviet parliament - the Soviet of Nationalities. Deputies to the other chamber - the Soviet of the Union - are" elected on a uniform basis: one deputy from 300,000 citizens.

The composition of the body of deputies also gives an idea of the intellectual potential of the autonomous republics. Out of sixty deputies fifty-nine have secondary (mostly complete) or higher education.

Since Soviet power was established in Russia great changes have taken place in the cultural life of all nationality areas.

For instance, in Bashkiria before the October revolution only twelve Bashkir boys attended primary school. An educationalist of that period calculated that if the school network were to develop at that pace, Bashkiria would become literate by... the year 2016.

Now Bashkiria, like the whole of the USSR, has completed in the main the transition to universal secondary (ten-year) education and has established its own higher school. "The Bashkir people," writes a French engineer, who has visited the republic, "have a university... where their children obtain a scientific education at the level of the most well-known educational establishments of the West."

This can be said about any of the autonomous republics. Fourteen of them have their universities, each of them boasts several institutes and technical colleges, they have national theatres and publishing houses and are developing national literatures. In every five-year-plan period general and secondary specialized education in the RSFSR is obtained by approximately 10 million, of all nationalities. In the Russian Federation there are 486 universities and institutes of higher learning - almost seven times as many as there were on this territory in 1914.

But the intellectual potential is a reflection of the economic potential. The industrial output of the whole of the Russian Federation has increased over the past 60 years more than 200 times, while in the Chuvash autonomous republic it has increased 512 times and in the Mari republic 372 times. The annual gross output in Bashkiria or Udmurtia now exceeds that of all prerevolutionary Russia. In a word, in all autonomous republics and also in autonomous regions and areas the rates of development are higher than in the RSFSR as a whole.

Soviet society, reads the Constitution of the USSR, guarantees the juridical and factual equality of all its nations and nationalities. And a case in point is the Russian Federation which has become a firm union of free nations.

LITHUANIAN CULTURE GROWS UNDER SOCIALISM

The first book ever printed in Lithuania was a Catholic catechism in the year 1547. Its opening lines read: "Brothers and sisters, take me and read me."

In 1547, however, there were few in Lithuania, or indeed elsewhere, who could take a book and read it. And in any case, despite this catechism, books were not generally published in Lithuanian, which was considered a language of the lower classes.

Thus, as a language, Lithuanian lived as precarious a life as did the people themselves. The history of Lithuania is also the history of the struggle for the right of its people to speak Lithuanian and in particular, to write in Lithuanian.

Forbidden by king and czar alike, it led an underground existence for years, taught to children at night by those few parents who knew how to read, in homes far from the eye of the spy and the ear of the informer.

Illiteracy was the darkness of the mind that helped bind the Lithuanian peasant to the land and to his master as surely as did poverty and religion. Every revolutionary, every patriot, every Lithuanian who admitted to being Lithuanian, understood that the very existence of himself as a Lithuanian depended on preserving his language.

The illiterate masses who had been invited in 1547 to "read me" - in fact could not do so for more than 400 years. Only in socialist times has illiteracy been wiped out.

Today, there are 6,000 libraries in the republic which, along with special libraries for the blind and handicapped, and farm libraries, present 90 million copies of books to some 1,300,000 readers in a country of a little more than 3 million inhabitants.

More than 90 per cent of all books published in Lithuania are published in the Lithuanian language. This means that more people than in all of Lithuania's history today read books in Lithuanian. About 17 million books are published every year.

Not until socialism came to Lithuania was it possible to speak of Lithuanian as a growing, living, and, develop ing language. And more people now know Lithuanian than ever before.

Was this an expression, of nationalism, as some maintain?

The truth is, there is no contradiction between socialism and national culture. On the contrary, socialism awakens the national identity of a people, often from centuries of slumber, from the darkness of oppression and ignorance,.restores its language, or even creates one where none existed before, returns the national traditions of the people to the people; develops a living new culture from the healthy roots of the old.

Lithuania today is more Lithuanian and less parochial and nationalist than it has ever been. A new generation has come into being that has known Lithuania only as a socialist nation with an all-embracing Lithuanian culture.

(From "Daily World", May 1978)

IZZAT KLYCHEV: ARTIST OF TURKMENIA

By Anton Refregier

Izzat Klychev is an artist of Turkmenia, a Central Asian Soviet republic that shares its borders with Afghanistan and Iran. In Turkmenia, one clearly sees the benefits the people have gained since the October Socialist Revolution. Its liberating forces unlocked the talents of people who, until recently, were restricted by the rules of the Moslem religion and by the oppression of imperialist czarism.

"When I was a small boy of six", Izzat told me, "I used to work in clay, making figures of animals and people. Later, I started to draw. At that time, it was still hard: the people - the religious people of our village - did not like me to make images. My father was a teacher in our village school, but he died when I was ten years old."

While he was still in school, the.Soviet Union was invaded by the nazis and Klychev spent the next five years at the front.

"I was decorated for fighting for our Motherland, and the end of the war found me in Berlin. Later I was accepted, without the usual examinations, at the Leningrad Academy of Arts where I studied for the next five years. The first year was hard - such a tremendous change in my life from war to peace. In the summertime when I returned home for the vacations, I painted our people. I studied our

national ornaments, our traditions. Our people are rich in the culture of our fathers, and this the artist must learn, must discover for himself. Culture enriches not only the people who created it but, if it is a great culture, it will enrich the world."

For the next five years, Klychev worked on collective farms; he traveled, painted portraits, taught. He was excited by the thought of painting the life of his people, and thus did the series "My Turk-menia". Of this, and of all of his work, he writes: "The theme of labour remains fundamental in my creative work as in that of many of my contemporaries. Cotton growers and shepherds, oil industry workers and builders of the Kara Kum Canal - these are the heroes of my future paintings."

Klychev's work is known not only in the Soviet Union. Exhibitions of his paintings have been sent by the Ministry of Culture and the Artists Union to Poland, the German Democratic Republic and elsewhere. He has traveled to many countries, including Cuba, where there is an increasing cultural exchange with the USSR.

We sat in Izzat's studio. A large portrait of Lenin, painted two years ago, occupied one wall; on another were his richly colored paintings of weavers, shepherds, still lifes of Turkmenian products.

I looked at the paintings around me. Some I remembered from color reproductions in Soviet magazines. I had been puzzled by the warm color tonality, the absence of greens and blues, the background of the figures often in a strange sandy color. Now, having seen Tur-kmenia, I understood the Klychev landscapes - the vast sand dunes, the Kara Kum desert.

"I love red color. I see it everywhere.- You can see that many of our women wear our national costume - the long tunic-like dress in shades of red. The rugs that our women weavers have made so famous are red. It seems to me that we are surrounded by this color and by the strong sun. To me red is strength. It is tied to our culture; it's the color of revolution. I love to use it in my work."

Klychev is not only the foremost artist of his republic, he is acknowledged as one of the leading artists of the Soviet Union. A soft-spoken man, gentle and considerate of others, he plays an important role in encouraging the new generation of Turkmenia. He is a member of the Supreme Soviet of Turkmenia and president of the Artists Union in Ashkabad. He is a secretary of the Artists Union of the USSR and in this capacity he spends one month each year in Moscow, taking his turn in administrative work, and in seeing to the needs of the artists of Turkmenia.

(Abridged)

THE VOICE OF REASON

The foreign policy credo of the CPSU and the Soviet state is perfectly clear. That credo is not the arms race, but curbing it. Not confrontation, but the preservation and deepening of detente. Not shrill recriminations, but a peaceful, productive dialogue. Not con-

servation of the old and provoking of new conflict situations, but their settlement and prevention. Not bellicosity, but restraint. Not inertia at disarmament talks, but vigorous initiative and resourcefulness in dealing with blind allies in international life and barriers impeding the limitation of the arms race. Not alienation and discord between East and West, but rapprochement and cooperation to prevent war that would be disastrous for all. Not conversion of the Third World into the object of fierce rivalry between the two diametrically opposed systems, but ensuring its peaceful and independent development, genuine equality and a just international economic order.

The present situation in the world arena makes it imperative to intensify work for peace, to exert new, additional efforts in this direction.

The Soviet Union holds that the paramount task of the day is the checking and termination of the arms race. The danger of war contained in the arms race hangs over the whole world. And it must be combated by common effort. The nations of the world are interdependent, and this interdependence is most acutely felt in the face of the threat of a thermonuclear conflict. The nuclear genie, once let loose, will spare no one. In blind fury it will strike right and left until it has reduced everything living to ashes.

The Soviet Union issued a call from the rostrum of the 26th Congress of the CPSU to the United States, the European countries and all other states to join in concerted effort to remove the common threat. The object must be not to beat each other in the arms race but together to beat the arms race.

To this end the Soviet Union proposes a quantitative and, what is particularly important, a qualitative freeze on medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe including the US forward-based nuclear weapons in this region. It proposes "defreezing" the talks on the limitation and reduction of armaments, primarily strategic armaments.

The aim of the Soviet proposals is to preserve everything positive accomplished in the process of detente, to stabilize the present unstable situation, and create the conditions for transition to a new and even more fruitful stage in the development of relations among nations.

At present the policy foundations are being laid for the eighties, a decade which many politicians regard as the most dangerous and decisive for the future of mankind. Will detente be continued or will it give way to confrontation, to antagonism fraught with conflict - that is the crucial question.

TWINNED CITIES FOSTER UNION OF PEOPLES

The striving of peoples of the world for peace, their desire to know each other better, result in friendship between families, cities and countries.

At the end of 1942, when a decisive battle of World War II was under way on the banks of the Volga, the defenders of Stalingrad received a telegram from Coventry, a war-ravaged city in Britain,

which expressed admiration and gratitude for the courage and staunchness of the Soviet troops fighting at Stalingrad and'said that their example inspired every honest person to rise in arms against the common enemy. The telegram was signed by the then Mayor of Coventry.

Reply messages were sent to Coventry from Stalingrad, voicing Soviet solidarity with the British in the struggle against the hated enemy, who had subjected Coventry to barbarous air raids. Soon a committee for friendship between the two cities was set up in Cdv-entry.

British workers collected money for medicines to be sent to the defenders of the Volga fortress. In the bombshelters of Coventry a large table-cloth bearing the city's coat-of-arms was passed from person to person, and they embroidered their names on it, and sent it to the Stalingraders as a token of their admiration and solidarity.

After Coventry, a warm handshake came from the inhabitants of the city of Dijon (France), the cradle of the French Resistance. Souvenirs were exchanged between the two cities to mark the establishment of contacts. Dijon residents presented Stalingraders with the Great Sword - their coat-of-arms. These and other gifts can now be seen in the city's museum.

That was how friendship and cooperation between cities came into being. To promote thi.i movement a new international body - the United Towns' Organization - was set up in April, 1957. The last Sunday in April was declared the World Day of twinned cities. The emblem of the organization is a big key against the background of a blue globe crisscrossed by parallels and meridians. At present the organization unites more than 2,000 cities in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. More than 100 Soviet cities maintain contacts with 250 cities in other countries.

Cooperation born of the joint struggle against fascism for peace and democracy, contributes to the solution of many common problems facing cities in our time, among them - protection of the environment, organization of communal services, municipal transport, etc.

Twinned cities do not leave each other in trouble. Suffice it to recall the days when unprecedented floods brought disaster to some cities in Italy. On the very next day the residents of the Soviet cities of Kiev, Tbilisi, Kharkov, Krasnodar and Novorossiisk sent to Florence, Bologna, Palermo and Ferrara food, medicaments and other urgent necessities. Soviet "twins" immediately announced their readiness to dispatch experts in the restoration of art treasures to Florence, where many unique works of art were damaged as a result of the flood.

Days of twinned cities are becoming ever more popular.

During the 20 years since its inception the United Towns' Organization has carried out various measures for the strengthening of mutual understanding. The motto of the organization - "Unite cities in order to unite the peoples" - has rallied young and old

cities on our planet. Their cooperation has markedly grown in recent times, in the more favourable international climate. The big family of friendly cities in our day is a vivid testimony of the materializing process of detente.

A "NONLINEAR" PERSONALITY

Rem Khokhlov died in 1977 at the age of 51. It seems a tragic absurdity: he could have gone on working brilliantly for another two or three decades. Nor is there any consolation in the fact that in the last fifteen years of his life he had traversed a path which takes many others a lifetime. He was a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, rector of Moscow University, Lenin Prize winner, deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet, a member of the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU and vice-president of the International Association of Universities. But above all he was a researcher whose work does honour to worJd physical science.

And he was also a mild, kind, and at the same time, daring person, given to taking chances. Some of his colleagues were inclined to think that Rem all too often tempted fate.

He once made a parachute jump without any preliminary training whatsoever. On a dare he walked across and back along a shaky log stretched over a mountain torrent. He disarmed a hooligan who was brandishing a knife in a suburban electric train.

But that was only one facet of his character. In sharp confrontations, when "common sense" suggested he should hold his tongue for the sake of peace and security, Khokhlov, who was by nature reticent, never once hesitated to speak up.

His parents belonged to the first generation of the Soviet technical- intelligentsia. For them an urge to change the world was inseparable from human decency - personal, scientific, civic. "Be the kind of person you want your child to become." Rem absorbed this principle thoroughly and well.

When nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Rem was only 15 years old and had just completed the seventh form. He could have gone on studying. But he considered it his duty to replace plant workers who had gone to the front. He worked for three years as a motor-car mechanic. At night he read textbooks, battling against terrible fatigue. In 1944 he took external exams for the 8th-10th forms of secondary school and entered the Moscow Aviation Institute. A year later he transferred to the Physics Department of Moscow University.

Khokhlov published his maiden scientific effort in 1948, when he was in the fourth year at the university. The work was of a purely practical nature - dealing with radiophysics. His fellow-students who were then mad about atomic physics, were amazed at the choice of such a modest theme by a young man who was thought to have great promise. When Rem turned his attention to what is known

as nonlinear phenomena, many people regretfully said that a capable lad was wasting his talents.

They were wrong, but this did not become obvious until the advent of masers and lasers. In this new field Khokhlov immediately emerged as a leader and his works on nonlinear phenomena earned him world renown.

Nonlinear phenomena appealed to Khokhlov the scientist. Possibly, this has something to do with his nature: as a man he also defied "linear" schemes and analogies. His interests went far beyond experimental physics - his main field of research. An analyst, he sought universal relationships, for instance, between sciences which stood far apart, between the humanitarian and natural principles of life. When old friends dropped into his rector's office and saw heaps of books on philosophy, biology and linguistics, they were wont to ask: "Do you really understand all these books?"

He was rector of the oldest and largest educational establishment in the country and an active member of the Academy of Sciences.He was entrusted by its Presidium to develop a scheme of relationships between all education institutions and the Academy's science. This spectacular programme is far from completed. Khokhlov had ambitious plans. He believed that by the 21st century universities and institutes would have to extend their activities beyond the younger generation, beyond the framework of'training personnel, and become education centers for the whole people.

The well-planned routine of this scientist and administrator included visits to the theatre, above all, ballet performances, previews of impressionist art exhibitions, sport activities. When students did their morning exercises on the slopes of Lenin Hills, they could regularly see their rector jogging along in a gym suit. Khokhlov could run 20 kilometres like a good stayer. In winter he would bathe in an ice-hole. He was a first-rate car driver and went in for downhill skiing. He was a mountain climber and made four ascents of peaks over 7,000-metres high.

Even in his rectorate days, deep down in his heart he remained the same old Rem he had been in his student days. His coevals were envious of his relations with the students, whom he treated as his equal, overlooking the difference in age and position. The dominant quality of this scientist and administrator was that he had no fear of talented people around him. Perhaps he would not have been what he was without constant contact he had with such people. And then he was capable of quickly "helping people to achieve independr ence in science", as a former fellow-student observed.

The time will come when the gamma-laser will go into mass production. Then man will be able to transmute one chemical element into another on an industrial scale, gratefully remembering the Soviet scientist Rem Khokhlov, who fathered the "crazy" idea, opening the way for it from the field of semi-fantastic hypotheses and research to engineering development.

NEW TRADITIONS IN A NEW WORLD

Soviet reality has brought to life new traditions and customs, new national holidays. Such are the celebrations marking the anniversaries of the October revolution, First of May, Soviet Constitution Day, International Women's Day, Victory Day. Each of them is a red-letter day and has its own specific features and unique colouring.

In the USSR the First of May is celebrated not only as the international workers' solidarity day but has also become a national festival of Spring.and Labour. In the morning hours of May 1st demonstrations of working people are held throughout the country. Coloured flags, red banners and slogans form a bright multi-coloured pattern against the first spring verdure. Songs ring all day long in the streets and squares of towns and cities. In the evening public merry-making begins, culminating in a gun salute of fireworks.

The October holiday has its own features. This is a holiday of revolutionary traditions. On November 7 military parades are held in Red Square in Moscow and in the capitals of the Union Republics, followed by working people's demonstrations. Like the First of.May, the October holiday is celebrated in each family. People send greetings to each other with festive cards and telegrams. Relatives and friends gather for a holiday dinner. The press, radio and TV mark the feats of revolutionary heroes and the achievements of outstanding Soviet people. At enterprises, in clubs, theatres and concert halls meetings, evenings and holiday concerts are held.

In the Soviet Union International" Women's Day is celebrated on March 8 on a grand scale. The fluffy spring of the mimosa flower has become a symbol of the holiday: it can be observed on badges and holiday postcards. On this day all women feel as if it is their holiday! They receive warm congratulations, diplomas and valuable presents, flowers and souvenirs.

Holidays in honour of people of different professions are becoming more popular with each passing year. There are Days of metallurgists, fishermen, geologists, etc. On these days festive meetings are held for people in the corresponding profession throughout the country and the best specialists and collectives are congratulated and awarded. Gala concerts are held in theatres and factory Palaces of Culture and transmitted over TV and radio. Public merry-making goes on in the parks.

It has become a tradition to mark one's initiation into the ranks of workers, and in the village, to celebrate one's first day at the tractor wheel. In a festive atmosphere the young workers receive tools inscribed with their names and gifts, and young people's balls are held in their honour.

^*For the instructions how to work at the texts and topics see pp. 6-7.

VOCABULARY LIST TO UNITS FOURTEEN-FIFTEEN

A
adhere v to adhere to a policy (principle, course, treaty, etc)	придерживаться; быть верным придерживаться политики (принципа, соглашения и т. д.)
adopt v	принимать
to adopt a constitution (resolution, etc)	принять конституцию (резолюцию и т. д.)
agreement n	соглашение, договор
an interim agreement to conclude (sign) an agreement	временное соглашение заключить (подписать) договор
amateur a	непрофессиональный, самодеятельности
an amateur talent group	тельный; кружок художественной самодеятельности
area n	район, область
a backward outlying area (of tsarist Russia)	отсталая окраина (царской России)
arms n	оружие, вооружение
strategic arms the arms race to curb the arms race	стратегические вооружения гонка вооружений обуздать гонку вооружений
atomic a	атомный
atomic energy the peaceful uses of atomic energy the atom-for-peace policy	атомная энергия использование атомной энергии в мирных целях политика мирного использования атомной энергии
automate v	автоматизировать
automated a a fully automated plant	автоматизированный автоматизированное предприятие
automation n	автоматизация
autonomous a	автономный
an autonomous republic	автономная республика
an autonomous region	автономная область
an autonomous area	автономный округ
autonomy n	автономия
В
ban v	запрещать
to ban nuclear tests	запретить испытания ядерного оружия
ballot n	избирательный бюллетень; голосование (тайное)
by secret ballot	тайным голосованием
benefit n	пособие
sick benefit	пособие по болезни

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