Учебно-методическое пособие по работе с темой "COUNTRY PROFILE". Дедова С.А. - 43 стр.

dus nourishes one of the most intensely irrigated regions on Earth. Engi-              Under the Soviets the epic was banned in schools, except for parts
neers in the Soviet Stans harnessed the Amu Darya and Syr Darya to grow        rewritten to conform to Soviel ideology; in Kyrgyzslan as elsewhere Mos-
cotton on huge farms. The new nations still grapple with the aftereffects,     cow suppressed ethnic tradition and pride. But Soviet authority did not eas-
land poisoned by agricultural chemicals and transformed into barren salt       ily penetrate the soaring Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges, and the
marshes.                                                                       Kyrgyz who lived there clung to their roots. Shepherds sang of Manas
       In ancient times, the British historian Arnold Toynbee has written,     around their campfires and parents handed down verses to their children.
Afghanistan was a «roundabout», a traffic circle, with routes converging               Annexed to Russia in 1876 as part of Russian Turkistan, the territory
«from all quarters of the compass and from which routes radiate out to all     of the Kyrgyz became a Soviet republic in 1936. The Soviets renamed the
quarters of the compass again». Those routes – silk roads and spice roads      capital Frunze, for a general of the Russian Revolution. After 1991 the
arcing across mountain passes, leaping from spring to well to river valley –   Kyrgyz took back the city's original name Bishkek, which is said to mean
knitted Afghanistan and the other Stans into a single skein. Mighty con-       «five knights». Legend holds that the knights fought one another to possess
querors strode these routs: Cyrus and Darius of Persia, Alexander, Attila,     the enticing site, a valley beneath shimmering mountains.
Mahmud, Tamerlane, Babur. The number of dynasties domestic and for-                    Today it’s hard to imagine knights squabbling over a raffish city of
eign grew to more than a score. From India in the third century B.C. came      Soviet-style apartment blocks, the home of many of the 603,000 Russians
Buddhism with Asoka, bloody conqueror who became an evangelist of              who remain in Kyrgyzstan.
peace, renouncing the killing of any living thing. Buddhism endured for                All told, Russians are 13 percent of the population. Another 300,000
hundreds of years, time enough and more for artisans to carve soaring          have departed, often complaining that jobs were being «Kyrgyz-fied». To
Buddhas in the rock of Bamian – statues gone forever, the last two de-         encourage skilled technitians to remain, the post-Soviet government in
stroyed by Taliban dynamite in March of last year.                             1996 recognized Russian as an official language alongside Kyrgyz, which,
       In turn, the Buddhists were engulfed by Islam, first brought eastward   like Uzbek and Turkmen, is a Turkic tongue.
to Iran by Arabs, then to the Stans beginning about A.D. 700. Through still            Kyrgyzstan’s mountains haven’t insulated the nation from the tur-
mainly Islamic, the Stans practice markedly different versions of faith. In    moil afflicting its neighbors. Bands of guerrillas, part of a radical move-
Pakistan conservative mullahs exhort street crowds with strident anti-U.S.     ment that aspires to create Islamic states, have infiltrated from neighboring
rhetoric. Islam in the ex-Soviet Stans is mostly moderate, even lax. Uzbeki-   Tajikistan, taking hostages and battling Kyrgyz troops.
stan, applying harsh Soviet-era rules, has jailed thousands of Muslims out             President Akayev has sometimes used Soviet methods, muzzling
of fear of an Islamic uprising aimed at supplanting the secular government.    critical newspapers and harassing and arresting political opponents or dis-
       The Stans are shot through with such issues of human rights and         qualifying them from seeking office. Akayev’s own reelection in 2000 was
governance. Pakistan is again under military rule. Rigid Soviet ways (one-     tarnished by stuffed ballot boxes and voter intimidation. Despite state re-
party rule, a smothered press) have not vanished from the former Soviet        strictions, an independent press and opposition parties survive.
regions. For most of the Stans the road to democracy looks long and uphill.            Trying to shift to a market economy, Akayev government Soviet-era
Security may be no closer. Nor peace.                                          factories and other enterprises into share-holder companies. But few have
                                                                               been able to find markets, and the government needs cash as it grapples
2) Pair work. Student A is to read the text Strong Roots, student B – Wild     with high unemployment, inflation, and potholed roads.
  Card. Then exchange your ideas about two Stans, covering the following               Central Asian experts say that Kyrgyzstan, already a debtor nation,
  points: politics, economy, social life, prospects.                           will need continual shoring up by international lending agences. The Manas
                                                                               legend may indeed be the country’s spiritual foundation; unfortunately, it
                            STRONG ROOTS                                       doesn’t pay the bills.
       Under Soviet rule religion was suppressed. But Muslims displayed
crude sickles that also evoke the crescent moon – symbol of Islam.

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