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Until 1800 the United States of America had five «capitals» or meeting places of the Congress - Princeton, Annapolis, Trenton, New York and
Philadelphia. For various reasons, none of these cities offered an ideal seat of government for the new nation. Southern states protested that they were all too far north. After the Constitution was adopted, the establishment of a new city was considered. President Washington pinpointed the exact location, and Congress passed a bill for a federal city and capital on July 17, 1790. The city of Washington was called just «The
Federal City». It didn't gain its name until after the first president's death. When Congress and the rest of the small government's agencies arrived from Philadelphia in, the new capital looked very unpromising indeed. Only a fragment of the Capitol was completed, and a part of the
White House. Other government departments were scattered about, and a few houses had been built. Up until the time of the Civil War, Washington grew quite slowly. It really was just another sleepy southern town, enlivened only when the Congress was in session, and not much even then. After the
Civil War it became the real capital of the United States.

The best known building in Washington is the White House, home of
American Presidents since 1800. The site was selected by president
Washington, the architect was James Hoban. The first residents of the White
House were President and Mrs. John Adams. The cornerstone of the Executive
Mansion, as it was originally known, dates from October 13, 1792, 300 years after the landing of Columbus. The president's home is the earliest of all government buildings in the District of Columbia. The British troops which arrived in Washington in 1814 were indirectly responsible for the name
«White House»: the building was fired by them. Later the fire marks on the walls were concealed by painting the whole building white. The term «White
House» became official at the end of the 19th century. The President works here in the «Oval Office», but the White House is also a family home.
President Truman had a piano next to his desk and President Kennedy's children used to play under his office windows.

Washington is a cultural centre. It is proud of its art galleries, a zoo, natural history collections, and the Museum of History and Technology.

Vocabulary

Nation - государство

Pinpoint - указать

Exact location – точное расположение

Pass a bill – одобрить законопроект

Cornerstone – краеугольный камень

Government buildings – правительственные здания

To be indirectly responsible for – быть косвенно ответственным за

Civil War – гражданская война

Enliven – оживлять

Be in session - заседать

Delay - задержать

Completion - завершение

Accessible – доступный (открытый)

Magnificent view – великолепный взгляд

International organizations and international co- operation

Russian literature in the last half of the nineteenth century provided an artistic medium for the discussion of political and social issues that could not be addressed directly because of government restrictions. The writers of this period shared important qualities: great attention to realistic, detailed descriptions of everyday Russian life; the lifting of the taboo on describing the unattractive side of life; and a satirical attitude toward routines. Although varying widely in style, subject matter, and viewpoint, these writers stimulated government bureaucrats, nobles, and intellectuals to think about important social issues. This period of literature, which became known as the Age of Realism, lasted from about mid- century to 1905. The literature of the Age of Realism owed a great debt to three authors and to a literary critic of the preceding half-century
Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Gogol, and Vissarion
Belinsky. These figures set a pattern for language, subject matter, and narrative techniques, which before 1830 had been very poorly developed. The critic Belinsky became the patron saint of the radical intelligentsia throughout the century.

Ivan Turgenev was successful at integrating social concerns with true literary art. His «Hunter's Sketches» and «Fathers and Sons» portrayed
Russia's problems with great realism and with enough artistry that these works have survived as classics. Many writers of the period did not aim for social commentary, but the realism of their portrayals nevertheless drew comment from radical critics. Such writers included the novelist Ivan
Goncharov, whose «Oblomov» is a very negative portrayal of the provincial gentry, and the dramatist Aleksandr Ostrovsky, whose plays uniformly condemned the bourgeoisie.

Above all the other writers stand two: Lev Tolstoy and Fedor
Dostoevsky, the greatest talents of the age. Their realistic style transcended immediate social issues and explored universal issues such as morality and the nature of life itself. Although Dostoevsky was sometimes drawn into polemical satire, both writers kept the |main body of their work above the dominant social and political I preoccupations of the 1860s and 1870s. Tolstoy's «War and Peace» and «Anna Karenina» and Dostoevsky's
«Crime and Punishment» and «The Brothers Karamazov» have endured as genuine classics because they drew the best from the Russian realistic heritage while focusing on broad human questions. Although Tolstoy continued to write into% the twentieth century, he rejected his earlier style and never again reached the level of his greatest works.

The literary careers of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev had all ended by 1881. Anton Chekhov, the major literary figure in the last decades of the nineteenth century, contributed in two genres: short stories and drama. Chekhov, a realist who examined not society as a whole but the defects of individuals, produced a large volume of sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, short stories and several outstanding plays, including
«The Cherry Orchard», a dramatic chronicling of the decay of a Russian aristocratic family.

Vocabulary

Artistic medium – художественное средство

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