Now read the review of the book Linda has written and do the tasks that follow before discussing it with your group.

Britons became a world-wide best-seller and Linda Colley's ideas have fascinated politicians, journalists and ordinary peo­ple alike.

In Britons she talks about the triumph of a pre-democratic, pre-industrial and pre-imperial Britain. Britain forged the great­est empire the world had ever seen, became a great trading and manufacturing nation. It created or invented the symbols, by which it could live and thrive and draw the allegiance of its citi­zens: the National Anthem, the Union Jack, and love and respect for the monarch.

In Britons she points out that one important part of that in­vention began in 1809 when a Shropshire housewife, a Mrs. Biggs, wrote to the Lord Chamberlain suggesting a jubilee or celebration of the King's 50th birthday. It had been a bad year for the Royals. In 1809 the Prince and Princess of Wales were living apart, the Duke of York was caught up in a sex scandal, and there was alleged corruption in the sale of honours. The press were having a field day when Mrs. Biggs made her suggestion.

The jubilee, the first of its kind, was a great success. Like so much of "Britishness" it was not the production of a political elite. It was "a people's jubilee", a symbol that this was indeed a united kingdom.

Linda Colley was among the first to recognize the impor­tance of such events. Nations, she says, need a kind of spinal narrative; a story, which gives them a structure shaped by histo­ry and geography.

"The USA is far too big geographically. It has massive eco­nomic inequalities within it. Yet its citizens can see it as a "top nation", because it has an effective story. They can believe in the "melting pot", in the "land of opportunity' and in the "American Dream". The dream works because the reality is successful".

According to Colley, it is when nations do not succeed that they begin to question their identity. Many Britons in the 18th century saw themselves as free men and their prosperous land as an island of liberty. They were not, as they believed the French were, priest-ridden and the prey of tyrants. The point was not that these notions were true. For the most part they were simply widely-held prejudices. What was important was that they were vital parts of the story by which Britons lived and for which they died.

Linda Colley says, "Britain has lost its story-line. It can no longer think of itself as the unique land of liberty, a second Isra­el, a chosen people. The challenge for Mr. Blair is to find a new story. We have seen the fading away of old beliefs, and the role of global powers, not just the European Union or other large confederations but the rise of global business with companies like Microsoft".

Linda Colley thinks that, despite steps taken to devolution and smaller-scale assemblies, the Government will necessarily have to be unionist, that is "British", to keep the United King­dom together. It will have to be informed by historians about the other constitutional changes. Historians can't tell ministers in detail what to do about, say, the reform of the House of Lords.

She says, "We can tell them why such reforms have failed in the past. History can illuminate; it cannot prophesy. History and politics are about ordinary people getting on with their ordinary lives".

Britons shows that it was what ordinary people thought and did that ultimately became the nation's history in the 18th centu­ry. They muddled through to a concept called "Britishness" which proved to be resilient and effective.

What comes next? Linda Colley says she does not know. But maybe that's some reason why she is currently fascinated by how ordinary people in the past coped with being captives, how they adapted to the new cultures forced upon them and yet retained what was essential in their own. The future may be about how we cope with being an outsider, a stranger, the other in a new world. And we may need this fascinating outsider to guide our understanding with the lessons of history.

The University of Bristol Magazine

Notes:

1. Shropshire — a county in W England near the border with Wales. Its local government is based at Shrews­bury;
2. chamberlain — an important official who manages the af­fairs of a king's or nobleman's court with re­gard to cleaning, cooking, buying food etc;
3. Microsoft — a US company which is one of the world's largest and most important producers of com­puter software. It is known especially for its Windows operating system, which is used on most personal computers, for Microsoft Word, a popular word-processing program, and for Internet Explorer, a popular program for searching the Internet. The company was start­ed by Bill Gates, who is still its chief director;
4. The house of Lords — the less powerful of the two parts of the British parliament. Its members are not elect­ed: they either belong to old noble families, whose right to be in the House of Lords can be passed down from father to son, or they are life peers, who have been given a special title because of their important achievements, which cannot be passed on to their children.

Explain the following:

1. What kind of institutions are: the London School of Eco­nomics, Yale University, Christ's College Cambridge?

2. Who can be considered an "establishment figure"? Does Lin­da Colley belong to the Establishment? Why? / Why not?

1. What is the Union Jack? Do you know the nick-name for its American counterpart?

4. What kind of message does the author try to convey by mak­ing a reference to "a second Israel, a chosen people"?

1. What kind of crime does the author mean by mentioning "al­leged corruption in the sale of honours"? What was being sold?
2. What did the author mean by the phrase: "the press were having a field day"?

General comprehension and discussion questions:

1. What kind of myths held the British Empire together? The Russian empire? The Soviet Empire?

2. Do you agree with the author that "nations need a story which gives them a structure shaped by history and geography"? How do political elites contribute to national mythology?

1. How long do national myths and symbols usually last?

4. What threatens the old mythology in GB?

1. What does Linda mean by saying: "History can illuminate, it cannot prophesy"?

6. Can anyone predict the future for GB? Is the author optimis­tic or pessimistic about the future of GB?

7. Does the author's attitude have anything to do with the fact that her book has become a best-seller?

Exercise 10

Translate the following words and add more to every line to com­plete the collocations:

1. to forge — to create, to establish

to forge a nation/an alliance...

1. allegiance — loyalty, duty, obedience

to pledge/renounce... allegiance

unflinching/enthusiastic... allegiance

1. to question — to doubt, to challenge

to question a decision/the truth...

1. resilient — elastic, quickly recovering from

resilient rubber/person

Exercise 11

   Find in the text the English equivalents for the Russian phrases below. Use them in sentences of your own .

1) прочитать лекцию; 2) в меньшей степени; 3) создавать империю; 4) добиваться поддержки со стороны граждан; 5) якобы существующая коррупция; 6) ставить под сомне­ние что-либо; 7) глобальные силы; 8) устойчивое понятие

Exercise 12

Fill in the gaps with the appropriate word.

1. All efforts to _____ unity in the party have fallen flat.
2. He showed his _____ to the President by writing an article about his great qualities.
3. Nowadays, women in many countries _____ their traditional role in society.
4. The accident has been a terrible shock, but she is very _____ and will get over it soon.
5. The US did its best to _____ an alliance to fight against world terrorism.
6. You are challenging my competence as a teacher and I _____ your right to do it.
7. The Opposition leaders have proclaimed their _____ to the new Government.
8. Democratic political structures have proved remarkably _____.
9. We need to _____ an alliance between and the workers.
10. In a civil war _____ are usually divided.
11. I would never _____  his integrity.
12. The concept was put forward for discussion to check how _____ it was.
13. The results of the recent presidential elections are still being _____.
14. Despite occasional lapses, his popularity as a leader proved to be lasting and _____.

Exercise 13

Translate into English using the word combinations you have

learnt.

1. Государственных служащих часто обвиняют в якобы су­ществующей коррупции в их рядах. Их честность ста­вится под сомнение, и, несмотря на отсутствие доказа­тельств этих обвинений, образ чиновника-взяточника устойчиво сохраняется.

2. Не сумев заручиться поддержкой влиятельных профсо­юзных лидеров, партия проиграла выборы.

3. Великобритания не раз заявляла о своей верности прин­ципам Североатлантического альянса, однако в отличие от Германии официальный Лондон явно в меньшей сте­пени обращает внимание на вопросы лидерства в НАТО.

4. Несмотря на закрытие ряда независимых газет, журна­листское стремление вести расследование случаев коррупции остается неизменным.

5. В краткие сроки США создали коалицию стран, готовых бороться с терроризмом.

Exercise 14

In writing support or refute Linda s thesis: "It is when nations do not succeed that they question their identity ".

Exercise 15

Render the text below into the English language using the prompts in brackets:

to acknowledge

socio-ethnic

level of consciousness

spiritual

the way people conceive

resiliency

community

values

entity to adjust

to enhance alienation

oversensitive reaction to give rise to

political turmoil unique character

means of defence

 

НАЦИОНАЛЬНОЕ САМОСОЗНАНИЕ — уровень представлений, характеризующий освоение людьми, при­надлежащими к той или иной национальной общности, ее идеалов, культурных норм, традиций, бытовых стереоти­пов, а также понимание ими интересов и положения дан­ной социально-этнической группы в обществе в целом.

Национальное самосознание формируется у отдельных людей по мере признания ими уникальности и устойчивос­ти национальных ценностей в целях идентификации, соци­ализации и адаптации к общественным условиям. Одновре­менно национальное самосознание может увеличивать от­чужденность людей от окружающей политической среды. Например, чувство национальной гордости может спрово­цировать обостренное отношение к положению своей этни­ческой группы в многонациональных государствах, иници­ировать политические беспорядки против режима, порож­дать сепаратистские движения.

На уровне нации национальное самосознание формиру­ется на той стадии эволюции ее духовной жизни, когда она складывается как общность, обладающая статусом и сред­ствами его социальной защиты.

Here is yet another point of view of a former British citizen, who immigrated to the USA, but still takes interest in his mother country.

Read the article and compare the author's attitude to Brit­ain and being British with that of the British woman who mar­ried a German person and now lives in Germany.

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT

(by Andrew Sullivan)

My home town was a kind of ground zero for Englishness. Almost a national synonym for middle-class ennui, East Grinsted was the last stop on a railway line south of London, the first place outside the metropolis that wasn't actually metropolitan, a welter of disappointment and understatement and yet also of a kind of pride.

When I grew up it was a commuter-belt development of 20,000 but also a place of its own. Its Victorian railway station and Elizabethan main street, its unique mix of local butchers, bakers, hardware stores and bookshops, vegetable allotments and rugby pitches, — they made it a place in itself, a place to stay and grow up in, a place that knew itself and knew where it stood.

But 15 years later, it is a place I almost fail to recognize. The old railway station has been replaced by a concrete terminus. The new de facto town center, a cavernous aircraft hangar of a supermarket, has displaced almost every local shop in the town. The main street is now a ghostly assortment of real estate offices and charity shops, banks and mortgage companies.

The main road now leads swiftly on to the new M25 that circles London. Trucks with Belgian and Italian licence plates clog the artery, on their way to the Channel Tunnel, And I click past dozens of German channels to watch Larry King.

This wasn't quite the script I had imagined when I left in 1984. Every emigrant to America likes to think of his home coun­try as a repository, of the old and the quaint, of unchanging sta­bility and backward thinking. So it is an adjustment to find the suburban England I had once seen as an edifice of nostalgia, class and passivity, become the kind of anonymous exurb I once associated with America, and to feel what such a transformation has clearly brought about.

By transformation, I mean the loss of national identity itself. For in a way perhaps invisible to outsiders and too gradual for insiders to fully acknowledge, the combined forces of globaliza­tion, political reform and the end of the cold war have swept through Britain in the past two decades with a force unequalled in any other country in the western world. As the century ends, it is possible to talk about the abolition of Britain without the risk of hyperbole.

The UK's cultural and social identity has been altered be­yond any recent prediction. Its very geographical boundaries are being redrawn. Its basic constitution is being guttered and reconceived. Its monarchy has been reinvented. Half its parliament is under the ax. Its voting system is about to be altered. Its currency may well soon be abandoned. And its role in the world at large is in radical flux.

Some of this change was organic and inevitable. But much of it is also the legacy of three remarkable prime ministers, who have successfully managed in very different ways to revolution­ize Britain's economy, society and constitution in a way that prom­ises to free the people of the island from the past that long threat­ened to strangle them.

It is part of the genius of Britain's undemocratic democracy that this transformation has taken place with such speed and thor­oughness. A British Prime Minister commands a largely unitary state with almost unchecked power for the indefinite tenure. With a solid majority in Parliament, he or she can do almost anything, and come from almost anywhere.

Walk through central London today and within a few blocks, you hear Arabic and Italian, Urdu and German. Australian ac^: cents are almost as common as American ones.

The distinct class dialects I remember from my youth — the high vowels of aristocracy, the rough, broad edges of Cockney, the awkward flatness of mid-England — are far less distinct. Even the BBC is a cacophony of regional accents, with Scottish brogue and Welsh lilt more common than the Queen's English of my teens.

Elsewhere, there is a kind of sonorous merging, the rise of a new accent that seems to have absorbed East End vowels with a southern English blandness. It is classless but at the same time fashionably downmarket. Tony Blair's voice captures it: he swings in one sentence from solid English propriety to sud­den proletarian slang.

Think of what Britain once meant and a handful of cliches come to mind. Bad food. Crooked teeth. Good manners. Prag­matism. Free speech. Theatre. Class. Monarchy. Poor heating. Sexual awkwardness. Sentimentality to animals. Looking at this list today, only a handful survive: theatre, free speech and the pet fixation. A modern list of "Britishness" would look altogether different. Designer furniture. Public relations. Sarcasm. Exces­sive drinking. Fast driving. Mobile phones. Tabloids. Sexual ease.

Tony Blair's real radicalism has turned out to be constitu­tional rather than economic or social. He embarked on perhaps the most far-reaching series of reforms ever tried by a modern British government.

Of the dozens of conversations I had in London about the future of the UK, no one I spoke to believed Scotland would be a part of Britain in 10 years' time. The Welsh, too, voted in favour of their own assembly.

When I left for America, the clear simple symbol of England was the Union Jack. It is now increasingly the bare emblem of St George, a red cross on a white background. You see it in soc­cer stadiums and emblazoned into the skulls of East End skin­heads.

The repercussions of this are a little hard to envisage. They extend from the possibility of a bitter if peaceful split-up — a kind of Yugoslavia with cups of tea — to more far-reaching questions such as Britain's place in the UN Security Council. Will England deserve a seat — with a population of merely 49 million, on barely two-thirds of a small island? No one seems to know.

It has become a rallying cry for all those suddenly fearful of the symbolic end of a nation that has, in truth, already ended. It is a symbol of a reality the English have accepted but not yet acknowledged.

Loss is the central theme of modern Britain: loss of empire, loss of power, loss of grandeur, loss of the comfort of the past. When Churchill called his countrymen to the immense task of 1940 by calling the Battle of Britain his nation's "finest hour", he was perhaps unaware of the burden that phrase would impose on future generations. How do you envisage a future in a country whose greatest moment has been indisputably centred in the past?

The British have finally stopped seeking a role and started getting a life. It is a typically pragmatic improvisation. By quiet­ly abolishing Britain, the islanders abolish the problem of Brit­ain. For, there is no "Great" hovering in front of Scotland, En­gland or Wales. These older deeper entities come from a time before the loss of empire, before even the idea of empire. Britain is a relatively recent construct, cobbled together in the 17th cen­tury in the Act of Union with Scotland, over-reaching in Ireland and America in the 18th and finally spreading as an organizing colonial force across the globe in the 19th.

Like the Soviet empire before it, although in an incompara­bly more benign way, this contrived nation experienced a cathar­tic defeat-in-victory in the Second World War, and after a des­perate, painful attempt to reassert itself, has finally given up. Before very long, the words "United Kingdom" may seem as anachronistic as "Soviet Union", although they will surely be remembered more fondly.

But unlike Russia's future, Britain's is far from black. Lon­don is Europe's cultural and financial capital. The ruddy faces and warm beer may be receding, but the rowdy cosmopolitanism that was once typical of the islanders under the last Queen Eliz­abeth seems clearly on the rebound.

Perhaps England's future, then, will be as a Canada to the EU's United States, with Scotland playing the role of Quebec.

Notes:

1) Victorian — used to describe the style of buildings and furniture, and the way that houses were decorated, during the Victorian period (1837-1901). Victorian buildings are typically made of red brick and often decorated on the outside;

2) Elizabethan — from or typical of the period when Eliza­beth I was queen of England (1558-1603);

3) Cockney — the way of speaking English that is typical of Cockneys, people who come from the East End of London, especially someone who is working class and who has an accent which is typical of this area. Only someone "born with­in the sound of bow bells," the bells of a church in the city of London, is considered to be a real Cockney;

4) the Queen's English — a name sometimes used for good correct English, as written and spoken in the UK, when a king is ruling instead of a queen, it is called the "King's English";

5) Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)— a British politician in the Conservative party who was Prime Minister during most of World War II and again from 1951 to 1955. He  is famous for the many speeches he made dur­ing the war. He is also known for making the V sign to show his belief in a British victory in the war;

6) the Battle of Britain — the name used for the fights between German and British aircraft during the summer and autumn of 1940. The bombing was stopped at the end of 1940, and British people considered this to be a great victory;

7) the Act of Union — the agreement that joined the parliaments of England and Scotland in 1707 as well as the agreement that ended the Irish parliament in 1800 and made Ireland part of the United King­dom in 1801;

8) ennui — tiredness and dissatisfaction caused by lack of interest (скука, томление, тоска);

9) exurb — (short for exurbia) settlements not far from cities (поселки, где живут работающие в боль­ших городах);

10) a cathartic defeat-in- victory — a serious unexpected defeat (поражение, в том, что казалось победой)

General comprehension questions:

1. Which features of his native town did the author use to asso­ciate with "Englishness"?

2. How does the author describe the typical attitude of emi­grants to their native country? Why do most of them not want their native country to change?

3. What factors according to the author served to transform the UK beyond recognition?

4. How has the structure of the state changed?

5. What is happening to the state symbols?

6. What consequences can the current reforms lead to in the future according to the author? What do you think?

7. How do different groups of people react to the changes? Why do most people show little concern?

8. What advantages can be gained by England if Britain is abol­ished from the point of view of the author? Do you agree?

9. Why does the author feel very pessimistic about the future of Russia? Are his apprehensions justified?

10. Do you think our country also faces a national identity cri­sis? How does it manifest itself? How long do you think it will take the Russian people to overcome it?

Exercise 16

Translate the following sentences from the text into Russian.

1. Almost a national synonym for middle-class ennui, East Grinsted was the last stop on a railway line south of London, the first place outside the metropolis that wasn't actually metro­politan, a welter of disappointment and understatement and yet also of a kind of pride.

2. Tony Blair's real radicalism has turned out to be constitu­tional rather than economic or social.

3. They extend from the possibility of a bitter if peaceful split- up — a kind of Yugoslavia with cups of tea — to more far-reaching questions such as Britain's place in the UN Securi­ty Council.

4. Before very long, the words "United Kingdom" may seem as anachronistic as "Soviet Union".

Exercise 17

What do those sell?

butchers, bakers, hardware stores, supermarkets, bookshops, char­ity shops, green-grocers

Exercise 18

In pairs, sort out those words into concept groups. Explain your reason for grouping the words in a particular way to your part­ner:

metropolis, cosmopolitanism, terminus, clich, tenure, commut­er-belt development, grandeur, sarcasm, globalization, exurbia, nostalgia, hyperbole, radicalism, edifice, unitary state, emigrant, repository, legacy, mortgage companies, pragmatism, entity, real estate offices, pragmatism, rugby pitches, vegetable allotments

Exercise 19

In the text of the article find the opposites for the following words:

1) de juro

2) overstatement

3) immigrant

4) upmarket

5) jingoism

6) conformism

7) idealism

8) harmony (in music)

Exercise 20

Explain the difference between the following words.

ACCEPT — ACKNOWLEDGE

ALTER — TRANSFORM

DISPLACE — REPLACE

ABANDON — GIVE UP

Exercise 21

Choose the right word.

1. He displaced/replaced a bone in his knee while playing sports.

2. Reputable scholars have abandoned/given up the notion.

3. They have altered/transformed themselves into permanent city-dwellers.

4. The former President of the Philippines refused to accept/acknowledge the authority of the court.

5. Thousands of people in the region have been forced to aban­don/give up their homes to enemy troops.

6. The astronaut accepts/acknowledges danger as being part of the job.

7. We've displaced/replaced the adding machine with a com­puter.

8. At a certain stage of its development Britain abandoned/gave up such foundations, merging its future irrevocably with the wider world economy.

9. Britain since the war has been altered/transformed from a society of hierarchy to a multi-layered, multi-dimensional society.

10. It is also legitimate to consider whether the old Establish­ment has indeed been displaced/replaced by new power- centers.

11. In housing, tower blocks (high-rise blocks of flats) are uni­versally accepted/acknowledged as a human disaster.

12. Tensions do not alter/transform the fact that there is still a political union called the United Kingdom.

Exercise 22

Fill in the gaps with the right word.

1. The terrorists refused to___________ the court.

2. America must radically___________ its traditional eco­nomic policy.

3. After five unsuccessful attempts, the mountaineers have __________ their bid to climb Everest.

4. The indigenous population was soon__________ by the settlers.

5. An area of sandy pastures can be_________ into a bar­ren landscape in two or three years.

6. She is____________ as an expert on the subject of poli­tics.

7. Arabic script was___________ with the Roman alphabet in official documents.

8. The company decided to__________ the project in view of the ever rising cost.

9. He grudgingly___________ having made a mistake.

10. In only 20 years the country has been___________ into an advanced industrial power.

11. He was registered as a___________ person.

12. Getting that new job has completely__________ her.

13. These resources can easily___________ nuclear power.

14. The immigrants showed an increasing unwillingness to __________ bad working conditions.

15. We shall never____________ the freedom that we have won.

16. In fact, most women have___________ their role in the family and in society.

Exercise 23

Translate the following sentences into English.

1. Несмотря на появление тревожных симптомов в эко­номике страны, в том числе заметное падение произ-водства и рост безработицы, большинство экономистов отказываются признавать наличие кризиса.

2. Незадолго до проведения всеобщих выборов партия за­явила о своих претензиях на завоевание большинства в парламенте, а ее лидеры обещали, что, в случае прихо­да к власти, будут стремиться к радикальному улучше­нию (радикальному изменению к лучшему) жизни про­стых людей.

3. По утверждению профсоюзных активистов, после того, как требования трудящихся будут признаны работодате­лями в качестве основы для нового коллективного дого­вора, угроза бессрочной забастовки практически будет сведена к минимуму.

4. Появившиеся сообщения о подавлении вооруженного мятежа резко изменили обстановку в парламенте — па­ника и растерянность, еще совсем недавно охватившие депутатов, сменились на настроения эйфории и вооду­шевления.

5. Принято считать, что овладение в совершенстве любым иностранным языком невозможно без понимания осо­бенностей психологии людей, являющихся его носите­лями.

6. По оценке политологов, правительство неоконсервато­ров уже в ближайшее время будет смещено, так как от­кровенный популизм и отсутствие реальной программы действий самым пагубным образом сказываются на его популярности.

7. По причине резкого ухудшения погодных условий груп­па спасателей была вынуждена временно отказаться от поиска пропавших альпинистов.

8. Российский руководитель распорядился изменить про­грамму своей поездки с тем, чтобы иметь возможность встретиться с известным писателем.

9. Сенатор признал, что уровень безработицы неуклонно растет, и у правительства нет ясной программы по повы­шению занятости трудового населения страны.

10. Город нисколько не изменился с тех пор, как я побывал тут в последний раз, хотя прошло почти четверть века.

11. Нельзя исключать, что пострадавший обратится с соот­ветствующим иском в суд, однако крайне сомнительно, что понесенные им в результате пожара убытки будут возмещены страховыми кампаниями.

Exercise 24

Match the following adjectives and nouns to form word combi­nations as they appear in the text. Suggest the Russian transla­tion for the resulting phrases:

backward             change

contrived             cry

cultural and social drinking

excessive               identity

indefinite              majority

organic and inevitable nation

proletarian             power

rallying                  slang

solid                         stability

unchanging                state

unchecked             system

unitary                         tenure

voting                    thinking

Exercise 25

Complete the sentences below using the appropriate word com­binations from the exercise above.

1. The reason for sacking most of the workers by the new man­agement lay in the workers' _____.

2. The success of the bank is due to the _________ of its performance in the most critical periods of the nation's his­tory.

3. The opposition strongly objects to what it sees as _____ of Prime Minister.

4. The first disputes about the state language in multinational states gave rise to concerns about _____.

5. The traditional conservatism of Civil Service stems from bureaucrats' political caution rather than _____.

6. As usual on the eve of the election party leaders addressed the rank and file with _____.

7. The question of reforming the British _____ has been discussed by both Houses of Parliament.

8. Most of the former Soviet republics embraced changes as _____.

9. The public opinion is strongly against the _____ of the regional leaders.

10. Czechoslovakia has often been regarded as a _____ because Czechs and Slovacs have never properly mixed into one nation.

11. The pro-President parliamentary groups have a _____ in the State Duma.

12. The Russian language of the 1930s abounded in _____ and other forms of informal language.

13. Like Britain, Sweden and Denmark are also _____, which have a single constitution for the whole country.

Exercise 26

Learn the following verbs:

1) to revolutionize

2) to command

3) to embark on

4) to extend

5) to impose on

6) to abolish

7) to spread

8) to recede

9) to envisage

Complete the sentences below using the verbs above.

1. Once the Royal Navy _____ the seas.

2. The railways are about to _____ on a major pro­gramme of modernization.

3. The important discovery has _____ our understand­ing of the Universe.

4. Most of those who voted for independence did not _____ war as the eventual outcome.

5. There have been calls for the monarchy to be _____.

6. The more society _____ conformity on its mem­bers the more people want to rebel.

7. Who has been _____ malicious rumours about me?

8. As the fear of famine _____, other things began to worry us.

9. His radicalism did not _____ to the sphere of eco­nomics.

1. We do not _____ a general election for at least an­other two years.
2. The new technology is _____ the way music is played and composed.
3. A huge tax burden was _____ upon people of in­comes.
4. There is a new drive in Britain to _____ fox hunt­ing.
5. Already the memory was _____.
6. Peru has _____ on a massive programme of re­form.
7. The city has _____ in all directions.
8. The bank has _____ very strict conditions for the repayment of debt.
9. For many years in the USA civil rights did not _____ to Negroes and women.

Exercise 27

Translate the sentences using the verbs above.

1. Составители закона не смогли предусмотреть всех воз­можных негативных последствий его применения и при­знали, что он потребует серьезных изменений и допол­нений.

2. Открытие нового лекарства коренным образом измени­ло методы лечения многих болезней.

3. Как в России крепостное право, так и в США рабство было отменено в 19 веке.

4. Надежда на быстрое спасение постепенно убывала.

5. Несмотря на предостережения коллег и собственные со­мнения, он решил взяться за лечение больного, чье пси­хическое состояние внушало явные опасения.

6. Против Ирака были введены экономические санкции.

7. Никто не мог предвидеть такого мощного извержения вулкана.

8. Опасность заразных болезней состоит в том, что они бы­стро распространяются и тяжело переносятся людьми с ослабленным здоровьем.

9. Власть накладывает чувство ответственности на тех, кто избран представлять интересы народа.

1. Как только угроза затопления ослабела, городские влас­ти немедленно взялись за укрепление набережной и мор­ской дамбы.
2. Новые таможенные правила не распространяются на определенную категорию товаров, прежде всего на пред­меты роскоши.

Exercise 28

Render the following passage into the English language:

 entity 

ethnic strife

cease to be     

confusion

to rock the boat         

to interpret as

misconception

a multitude of minor sovereigns

to speculate about

national sovereignty

 

1991 год, год распада СССР, повлек за собой не только чудовищные межэтнические распри, но и чудовищную ми­ровоззренческую дезориентацию. Одним хотелось бы пре­образовать это государство в русское. Другие, наоборот, рас­качивают и без того не слишком устойчивую федерацию, используя девиз о предоставлении самостоятельности. Раз­решимо ли это противоречие? Думается, что разрешимо.

Отсутствие демократической традиции имело своим пе­чальным результатом смещение в значении понятий: нацию у нас привыкли понимать не как сообщество граждан, а как некую культурную (или, того хуже — этническую) целост­ность. Вместо того, чтобы вести речь о единой нации росси­ян, объединенных одним общим и прошлым и будущим, мы говорим о существовании под крышей одного государства различных наций. Российское государство из единственно­го носителя суверенитета превращается во вместилище мно­жества суверенов. Проблема культурного самоопределения подменяется проблемой этнического самоопределения. Меж­ду тем в большинстве демократических стран эти вещи стро­го разведены.

Так, в бывшей Австрийской империи, забота словенцев о сохранении своей этнокультурной самобытности, отнюдь не означает, что они перестают быть австрийцами. Принад­лежность особому этническому сообществу не мешает им принадлежать к общей для них с чехами, хорватами, слова­ками, евреями австрийской нации.

Вера в то, что государственно-политическая общность прочна лишь тогда, когда опирается на этнокультурную однородность — один из самых вредных предрассудков XX века.

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