The Soviet dissidents.

With the death of dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953, challenges to the authority of the Communist party began to be heard in the Soviet Union. Groups of dissenters comprising students, intellectuals, and artists argued for freedom of speech and respect for human rights. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, at first tolerated this openness, but dissidents were later ruthlessly persecuted by Soviet authorities. Many members of the intelligentsia were driven underground or forced to emigrate. The strength of dissident groups reached its pinnacle in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Self-published literature, called samizdat, promoted free speech and was secretly distributed among dissidents. Leonid Brezhnev, who replaced Khrushchev in 1964, cracked down on dissident activity, fearing that it would undermine the legitimacyof the Soviet system. Through contact with the West, dissidents transmittedinformation about human rights violations in the Soviet Union to the world, and many politically controversial works that were refused publication in the Soviet Union were published abroad. A leading figure among dissident writers was Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a former political prisoner. In 1962 he published his short novel ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich', which depicted the daily life of an inmatein one of Stalin's slave labor camps. Beginning in the late 1960s, Solzhenitsyn's work was bannedin his homeland because of his criticism of government repression. The recipient of the 1970 Nobel prize for literature, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, soon after parts of his three-volume prison memoir ‘The Gulag Archipelago' were published in Paris. The dissent that permeatedpost-Stalinist Russian literature was echoed by dissidents in other fields. Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet nuclear physicist who played a crucial role in the development of the Soviet Union's first hydrogen bomb, wrote an essay in 1968 that called for Soviet-American cooperation and an end to nuclear arms proliferation. In the 1970s he campaigned against human rights abusesin the Soviet Union. Soviet authorities sentenced Sakharov to internal exile in Gorky in 1980. Roy Medvedev, a historian, was expelled from the Communist party under Brezhnev in 1969 because of his criticism of Stalinism. During the Gorbachev era, political reform led to the releaseof many dissidents, and previously banned works found a new audience in the Soviet Union. Sakharov was released from exile in 1986, and Solzhenitsyn's Soviet citizenship was restored in 1990. Medvedev was readmitted to the Communist party in 1989.

(From: Britannica Student Encyclopedia 2004 Children's Edition. 1994-2003)

Exercises:

1. Explain the underlined grammar phenomena.

2. Translate the words in bold.

3. Define the notions of individual and social rights, samizdat and slave labor camps

4. Do you agree with the statements in bold?

5. Give the summary of the text.

6. Ask problem questions to the students.

Read thetextbelow, translate it and learn the new words:

Text 3

Women rights

Throughout most of history women generally have hadfewer legal rights and career opportunities than men. Wifehoodand motherhood were regarded as women's most significant professions. In the 20th century, however, women in most nations won the right to vote and increasedtheir educational and jobopportunities. Perhaps most important, they fought for—and to a large degree accomplished—a reevaluation of traditional views of their role in society. Women were long considered naturally weaker than men, squeamish, and unable to perform work requiring muscular or intellectual development. In most preindustrial societies, for example, domestic chores were relegatedto women, leaving “heavier” labor such as hunting and plowing to men. This ignored the fact that caring for children and doing such tasks as milking cows and washing clothes also required heavy, sustained labor. But physiological tests now suggest that women have a greater tolerance for pain, and statistics reveal that women live longer and are more resistant to many diseases. Maternity, the natural biological role of women, has traditionally been regarded as their major social role as well. The resulting stereotype that “a woman's place is in the home” has largely determined the ways in which women have expressed themselves. Today, contraception and, in some areas, legalized abortion have given women greater control over the number of children they will bear. Although these developments have freed women for roles other than motherhood, the cultural pressure for women to become wives and mothers still prevents many talented women from finishing college or pursuing careers. Traditionally a middle-class girl in Western culture tended to learn from her mother's example that cooking, cleaning, and caring for children was the behavior expected of her when she grew up. Tests made in the 1960s showed that the scholastic achievement of girls was higher in the early grades than in high school. The major reason given was that the girls' own expectations declined because neither their families nor their teachers expected them to prepare for a future other than that of marriage and motherhood. This trend has been changing in recent decades. Formal education for girls historically has been secondary to that for boys. In colonial America girls learned to read and write at dame schools. They could attend the master's schools for boys when there was room, usually during the summer when most of the boys were working. By the end of the 19th century, however, the number of women students had increased greatly. Higher education particularly was broadened by the rise of women's colleges and the admission of women to regular colleges and universities. In 1870 an estimated one fifth of resident college and university students were women. By 1900 the proportion had increased to more than one third. Women obtained 19 percent of all undergraduate college degrees around the beginning of the 20th century. By 1984 the figure had sharply increased to 49 percent. Women also increased their numbers in graduate study. By the mid-1980s women were earning 49 percent of all master's degrees and about 33 percent of all doctoral degrees. In 1985 about 53 percent of all college students were women, more than one quarter of whom were above age 29.

Gender Wage Gap. Despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women in 1970 were paid about 45 percent less than men for the same jobs. But, since 1979, wages for female workers had been steadily increasing, and by 1993, the average pay of women was about 77 percent of the average pay of men in the workforce.

However, the gap between the respective wages of men and women widened by two percent during the four-year period from 1993 to 1997. Many economists saw the increase as a by-product of welfare reform that has pushed a large number of unskilled laborers into the workforce. Some economists argued that the increase in demand for jobs would drive wages among unskilled workers down by as much as 12 percent, and the wage decrease would be felt the hardest among women workers, who made up the majority of the unskilled working pool. Working women often faced discrimination on the mistaken belief that, because they were married or would most likely get married, they would not be permanent workers. But married women generally continued on their jobs for many years and were not a transient, temporary, or undependable work force. From 1960 to the early 1970s the influxof married women workers accounted for almost half of the increase in the total labor force, and working wives were staying on their jobs longer before starting families. The number of elderly working also increased markedly.

(From: Britannica Student Encyclopedia 2004 Children's Edition. 1994-2003 )

Exercises:

1. Translate the words in bold.

2. Explain the underlined grammar phenomena.

3. Render the text.

4. Define the notions: wifehood, motherhood, maternity, gender wage gap

5. Do you agree with the italicized statements?

6. Ask problem questions.

Read thetextbelow, translate it and learn the new words:

Text 4

Minority groups

The terms minority and  majority would seem to be mostly about numbers. A minority can be defined as less than half the population in a society. Therefore African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanic Americans can all be considered minorities in the United States. Realistically, however, minority cannot always be defined by numbers. Being in a minority often can have much more to do with one's standing in society. The black people of South Africa make up the overwhelming majority of the population.

The most common conception of a minority is of a group of people who are distinct in ethnic background, religion, language, or nationality. Such minorities are often visible in contrast to the rest of society. Asian Americans, for example, are perceived as a distinct group in contrast to the mass of white Americans. In India the Sikhs are visible in relation to the Hindu majority by dress, general appearance, and religious practice. Every nation with a sizable population has minority groups within it.

Whereas racial and ethnic characteristics most frequently serve to set minorities apart, there are other kinds of minorities as well, including religious, sexual, economic, and political. In Egypt the Coptic Christians are a minority. They are distinguished by their generally low economic and social status in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation. In many nations openly homosexual people are in the minority and are shunned. Throughout history all societies have had economic minorities.

Political minorities are often called factions or interest groups. Any group that organizes to achieve political aims may be considered a minority. Sometimes a minority may gain control of a government and establish itself as the majority by subordinating the rest of society. This happened in 1917 in Russia. A faction of the Communist party, the Bolsheviks, seized control of the revolution and established the Soviet Union. In many countries such minorities seek only limited political and economic aims, not control of the government. To achieve their aims they vote for representation in government, and they form organizations to put pressure on elected officials.

(From: Britannica Student Encyclopedia 2004 Children's Edition. Copyright © 1994-2003

Exercises:

1. Translate the words in bold.
2. Explain the underlined grammar phenomena.
3. Give the summary of the text.
4. What do you think about various types of minorities in our republic?
5. How should people treat national minorities? Sexual minorities?
6. What is your attitude to so called right defenders?

2. Project\Writing:

• Wright an article on the matter and send it to the magazine “A different View”
• Make up a report and a presentation on your article and deliver it.
• Try to discuss the problems of human rights, using the E-mail discussion list.

Current events.

Using informational internet sites find and render the information about current political events.

6. Vocabulary:

to endow, unalienable, to pursuit, by virtue of, to regard, abundant, to relate, to infer with, scattered passages, evidence, prohibition, Ten Commandments, murder, theft, to give implicit recognition, to elaborate, passionate discourses, prophets, validity, to fail, to imply, the supremacy of, valid instances, the Renaissance, resistance to, to surface, the Enlightenment, to interfere with, turnaround, to dispense, to assert, to institute, outspoken, to denounce, to derive from, disciple, jurist, to exalt, abuse, appalling, extermination, concentration camps, to horrify, widespread fundamental assumptions, for the sake of, umbrella term, related obligations, eternal vigilance, to guard, to lessen, to come into prominence.

to spell out, amendments, to shield, encroachment, safeguarding, challenges, dissenters, comprising, to tolerate, dissidents, ruthlessly persecuted, to reached its pinnacle, self-published literature, to crack down, to transmit, controversial, political prisoner, to depict, inmate slave labor camps, to ban, recipient of the Nobel prize, to expel, memoir, to permeate, to echo, to play a crucial role, proliferation, to sentence, internal exile, to release.

to increase opportunities, to accomplish, squeamish, to relegate, domestic chores, sustained tolerance, resistant to, maternity, abortion, to prevent from, to pursue career, scholastic, to estimate, resident, to obtain, to earn, transient, influx, to account for, markedly, to shun, overwhelming.

Unit 7

Ecology

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1105