《瘋狂英語》精選輯:（前）蘇聯(lián)

瘋狂英語精選輯 The Soviet Union

The Soviet Union, the largest country in the world, sprawls across two continents, eleven time zones from West to East. But her greatest cities lie here in Europe: Leningrad in the north, a stone throw from Scandinavia, and Moscow on the great Russian plain, the centerpiece of the nation in every respect. It was the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin who wrote: "Moscow, how violently the name plucks at any Russian heart. "For this is the focal point of the country: government, religion, education, the very spirit of the Soviet Union makes its home in Moscow. Eight million people also live in the metropolis, about as many as in New York or London, but they are squeezed into an area only half London's size. It was prince Yuri Dogoruki who in the year 1147 first established a settlement here on a bluff overlooking the Moscow river. Despite being sacked and burnt by the invading Tartars in the next century, Moscow soon became the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church and by the sixteenth century had grown outwards into a thriving city, centered around the Kremlin, the headquarters of the Czars. In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia with 600,000 troops. In a desperate attempt to keep Moscow out of Napoleon's hands, the defenders set fire to their own capital. For three days Moscow burnt. The Kremlin was badly damaged and two thirds of the city was erased. The city was threatened again during World War II. This time it was 75 Nazi divisions who laid siege. Government officials, children and art treasures were evacuated as the Germans approached to within ten miles. But for six months the city held fast. In the end the battle of Moscow proved to be the Nazis' first major defeat of the war.

Through the centuries the heart of Moscow has always been the Kremlin, the seat of the government. A city within a city, surrounded by a wall one and a half miles long and up to twenty feet wide. The Kremlin's sixty acres of palaces, museums and churches make it Europe's most concentrated expression of the art, architecture and history of a single nation. Russians go even further. One playwright wrote: "The Earth, as we all know, begins at the Kremlin. It is her central point." The Kremlin's most conspicuous landmark is the bell tower of Ivan the Great. Built on the site of an old church nearly five hundred years ago, the bell tower was until World War II Moscow's tallest building.

Just outside of the Kremlin lies Red Square, which in Mediaeval times was an enormous market place. Today the square is the setting for the Soviet Union's most splendid pageantry: the May Day parade and the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, celebrate each October. Red Square has always been a central gathering place, even in the days of the Czars. In fact, its name in Old Slavonic actually means "main square" or "beautiful square." Also in Red Square is the tomb of Vladimir Ilici Lenin, founder of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and still revered as the father of the Revolution. The tomb, built of black granite six years after his death, is the scene of a solemn changing of the guard every hour of every day.