28 - 1910)
Dostoevsky, the real master of psychological prose, is often compared with Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy is the greatest Russian thinker and one of the worlds supreme novelists. The secret of Tolstoys literary success lays in his truthfulness to life.
Tolstoy was born in 1828 at the family estate in Yasnaya Polyana. As a young man, he served in the army in the Caucasus and in the Crimea. There he wrote his first Sevastopols Stories. After marriage to Sophia Behrs in 1862, he spent the next fifteen years in the countryside where he finished his War and Peace in 1869 and Anna Karenina in 1877. Two years later he came to deep spiritual crisis, described in his Confession. Rejecting the inventions of urban civilization, Tolstoy declared a return to the simplicity of primitive agricultural life. He was deeply unhappy about the fact that he was living in conditions of luxury while surrounded by poverty. In the end of his life Tolstoy left Yasnaya Polyana forever at the age of eighty-two.
LISTENING
Put the adjectives in brackets in the correct comparative or superlative form. Decide if the statements are T (true) or F (false). Listen and check.
FAMOUS RUSSIAN FIGURE SKATERS
1. Slutskay and Gordeeva are two of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (famous) skaters in Russia. . . . . . .
2. Irina Slutskay is . . . . . . . . . . . . (young) than Ekaterina Gordeeva. . . . . . . .
3. Slutskay is the . . . . . . . . . . . . (talented) jumper of all female athletes. . . . . . . .
4. Gordeeva and her husband won . . . . . . . . (many) Olimpic medals than Irina . . . . . . .
5. Gordeeva started skating at a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (young) age than Irina. . . . . . . .
TAPESCRIPT
Two of the most famous female skaters in Russia
Страницы: << < 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 > >>