Аракин 4 курс полностью

Unit Seven 
From: THE TIME OF MY LIFE 
by Denis Healey
 
TEXT 
DRAWING BACK THE CURTAIN 
Denis Healey was bom in 1917 and brought up in Yorkshire. After gainig a double first at Balliol 
College, Oxford, for six years he was a soldier learning about real life.
Another six years as International Secretary of the Labour Party taught him much about politics, both 
at home and abroad. From 1952 to 1992 he was a Labour Member of Parliament for Leeds.
He is a prolific journalist and broadcaster. He has published Healey's Eye, a book on his life as a 
photographer, and has contributed essays to many publications for the Fabian Society
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including New 
Fabian essays and Fabian International Essays.
When Shrimps Leant to Whistle, Signposts for the Nineties, also published by Penguin, include a 
selection of his earlier writings which are relevant to the world after the Cold War. 
In the early years after the war, when we first heard the truth of what Russia was 
doing in Eastern Europe, and began to look more objectively at the Soviet Union itself, 
my generation was powerfully influenced by George Orwell's 1984, and by a flood of 
books which purported to analyse the nature of totalitarianism.
My visits to Eastern Europe cured me of any erratic illusions. No power could destroy 
national traditions which were rooted in centuries of history. Moreover, these peoples 
yearned to return to the Europe in which Chopin and Bartok were part of a common 
civilisation with Bach and Verdi. Once Stalin died, it was clear that Soviet Communism 
already carried the seeds of its own destruction. The Russia of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and 
Herzen was still there beneath the surface. Stalin could no more expunge it from the 
consciousness of its people than Hitler could liquidate the Germany of Beethoven, 
Goethe, and Kant.

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I had been fascinated by Russia since I read its great novelists as a schoolboy. My 
years in the Communist Party at Oxford had given me sufficient understanding of 
Stalinism to reject it even while I still saw Russia as a socialist state and a necessary ally 
against Hitler. I was also impressed by much of pre-war Soviet culture.
The great Soviet film-makers of those days — Einstein, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko — 
seemed superior to their Western rivals. Though I loathed "Socialist Realism", I admired 
the paintings of Deineka. They were in a book given me by a friend; she also introduced 
me to Shostakovich's opera, The Lady Macbeth ofMtsensk.
After the war I found that my friend had disappeared during the great purges, and that 
Lady Macbeth had been banned.
This helped to reinforce the bitter hostility I had developed for Soviet policies both at 
home and abroad.
Most of our visit was spent in sightseeing. We were of course, with our consent, taken 
to schools, factories, and collective farms. It also included the visits to the Hermitage in 
Leningrad and the magnificent summer palace of Peter the Great overlooking the Gulf of 
Finland, its fountains sparkling in the autumn sun, its rococo buildings gleaming with 
white and gold; like most other palaces, it had been meticulously restored to its former 
glory after almost total destruction by the Nazis. In Leningrad we were given a concert at 
what had originally been the club where members of the first Russian Parliament, or 
Duma, used to meet, hi those nineteenth-century surroundings, the concert itself was like 
a salon at the court of Queen Victoria, as sopranos and baritones in evening dress sang 
ballads and songs by "Kompositori Verdi" in voices of remarkable purity.
By comparison with the eighteenth-century canals of Leningrad, which might have 
been part of Amsterdam or Bremen, the Kremlin brought us to the heart of old Russia. I 
had imagined it a building as grimly functional as the Party it housed, and was quite 
unprepared for the mediaeval splendour of its palaces and churches, scattered among 
copses of birch and lilac.
My visit to Russia in 1959 began to give me some sense of these cultural changes. I 
was immensely impressed by the 

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Практический курс английского языка. 4 курс под ред. В.Д. Аракина
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charm and quality of the young sixth formers we met in Leningrad at school.
In manner and appearance they could have come from any of the upperclass families 
described by Turgenev or Tolstoy. Similarly, the colleges which taught foreign languages 
and international affairs were giving a rounded education to able young men and women, 
who are now in key positions in their country, where their knowledge of the outside 
world is invaluable.
The creative intelligentsia, such outstanding people as Sa-kharov, with his strong 
opposition to using the hydrogen bomb, Solzhenitsyn, exposing the life in a labour camp 
(A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich), Yevtushenko with his poem Babiy Yar on anty-
Semitism in the Soviet Union — were giving a headache to the authorities.
And yet we saw signs of the cultural thaw all around us.
Jazz was officially disliked, but they didn't use the power of the state to prevent it. Its 
public performance was then largely confined to the circus and music hall. In Leningrad 
we saw an ice-spectacular in which the girls were half-naked, in costumes reminiscent of 
the pre-war Folies Bergere.
The theatre and ballet had changed little since the revolution, the best had been 
preserved.
The Moscow Arts Theatre performed Chekhov as Stanislavsky had produced it half a 
century eariler — as sad comedy rather than as tragedy with humour. The only 
ideological change I noticed was in Uncle Vanya: Astrov was presented as a handsome, 
vigorous young prophet of a better future, rather than as the wrinkled cynic of Olivier's
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interpretation at the Old Vie
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. We saw the aging Ulanova at the Bolshoi in a ballet based 
on a novel by Peter Abrahams about Apartheid
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in South Africa, which called on her to 
act rather than to dance. On the other hand we saw Plisetskaya at her best as prima 
ballerina in Prokofiev's The Stone Flower. I shall never forget her rippling sinuosity.
In 1963, when I next visited Russia, the general atmosphere was more liberal than on 
my first visit, and as I was not on official delegation, but attending an informal 
conference between Soviet and Western politicians, I had a good deal more freedom.

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Практический курс английского языка. 4 курс под ред. В.Д. Аракина
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Our guide was a gentle young man called Kolya who had just got his degree in foreign 
languages. He had been at the World Youth Congress that summer in Moscow, and 
greatly enjoyed reciting phrases of hair-raising obscenity which he had picked up from 
his American comrades. Jazz was now all the rage, and since imports of Western records 
had been stopped, a disk by Dave Brubeck was beyond price. Since then the international 
youth culture has swept the whole of Russia like a hurricane.
I learned much from these visits to Russia, restricted though they were, and was to 
learn more still from later visits. I do not accept the view that short visits to foreign 
countries are more likely to mislead than to educate. On the contrary, providing you have 
done your home-work before you go, they not only enable you to check some of your 
views, but also provide you with a library of sense-impressions which give reality to any 
news you read later.
However, for this purpose I think three days is better than three weeks.Anything over 
a week and less than three years is liable to confuse you. But series of short visits, at 
intervals of over a year, can give you a sense of the underlying trends in a foreign country 
which no accounts in the press can provide. Above all, I learned that the Russians, like 
us, were human beings, although they were not human beings like us.