FOR UNIT V

I. This time you have to read, translate the following English text into the Russian language and to provide the brief summary of the text using the expressions from Unit 2

RELIGIONS IN MODERN SOCIETY

Judaism

Judaism is the oldest of the three religions, dating from about 1000 B.C. The early Hebrews, a northern Semitic people, were nomads living in lands adjacent to and in ancient Egypt. The Hebrew prophets (inspired leaders or teachers) drew their ideas from religious beliefs existing in the region, but their commitment to a single almighty God distinguished their beliefs from those of surrounding religions, most of which were polytheistic. The prophets emphasized that obedience to God meant the following of strict moral codes. They also strongly insisted on their claim to a monopoly of truth, declaring their religion the only true one (Zeitlin, 1985, 1988).

The holy book of Judaism is the Tenakh, the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The Tenakh is divided into three sections, the Torah, Neviim, and Ketubim. The Torah, also referred to as the Five Books of Moses, is the most important of the three and begins with the creation of the world by the word of God, who said, "Let there be light,' and there was light." Much of the Torah describes God's communications to Moses and through him to the Hebrew people, instructing them in how to live and how to worship.

Christianity

Christianity began as a sect of Judaism and incorporated many Judaic views. Historians are not certain that Jesus, who himself was an orthodox Jew, intended to found a religion distinct from Judaism, but his disciples came to think of him as the promised "Messiah"—a Hebrew word meaning "the anointed," for which "Christ" was the Greek word. St. Paul, a Greekspeaking Roman citizen and contemporary of Jesus, was a major initiator of the spread of Christianity. He preached extensively in the Near East and Greece, though not always to receptive ears. From the crucifixion of Jesus and some of his disciples to the tearing apart of believers by lions in the Roman Colosseum, Christians were savagely persecuted. The emperor Constantine eventually adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, but not until the fourth century. Since then, Christianity has

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grown to become a dominant force in Western culture. Christianity today commands the greatest number of adherents, and is more generally spread across the world, than any other religion. Close to 2 billion individuals regard themselves as Christians. Besides its main branches—Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy—there are many small subdivisions, each with its own theology and church organization.

Islam

The origins of Islam, presently the second largest religion in the world, overlap with those of Christianity. Islam derives from the teachings, of the seventh-century prophet Mohammed. The single God of Islam, Allah, is believed to hold sway over all human and natural life. The Pillars of Islam are the five essential religious duties of Muslims, or Moslems (as believers are called). The first is the compulsory recitation of the Islamic creed, "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is the apostle of Allah." The second pillar consists of the reciting of formal prayers five times each day, each prayer preceded by ceremonial washing. The worshipper at these prayers must always face toward the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, no matter where he is. The third pillar is the observance of Ramadan, a month of fasting during which no food or drink may be taken during the daylight hours. The fourth is the giving of alms (money to the poor), set out in Islamic law, which often has been used as a source of taxation by the state. Finally, there is the expectation that every believer will undertake, at least once in life, a pilgrimage to Mecca. Moslems believe that Allah spoke through earlier prophets—including Moses and Jesus—but that Mohammed's teachings most directly express Allah's will.

The Islamic scriptures, known collectively as the Koran, are a collection of the messages that Muslims believe Mohammed received from God. Mohammed could not read or write, so he memorized God's words, passing them on to those who became his followers. After his death, some of the followers decided to write down his sayings in an authoritative form. "Koran" comes from an Arabic term meaning "to recite," and simply means "the recitation"—the words of God as revealed to the Prophet. Islam has come to be very widespread, with over 1 billion adherents throughout the world. The majority of Muslims are concentrated in North and East Africa, the Middle East, and Pakistan.

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II. This time you have to read, translate the following English text into the Russian language and to provide the brief summary of the text using the expressions from Unit 2

Hinduism

The oldest of all the great religions still prominent in the world today is Hinduism, the core beliefs of which date back some six thousand years. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion with an array of beliefs and rituals. It is so internally diverse; in fact, that some scholars have suggested that it should be regarded as a cluster of related religions rather than a single religious orientation. Most Hindus accept the doctrine of the cycle of re- incarnation—the belief that all living beings are part of an eternal process of birth, death, and rebirth. A second key feature of Hinduism is the caste system (see UNIT 9), according to which individuals are born into their positions in the social and ritual hierarchy, their level in that hierarchy being determined by their activities in previous incarnations. There is a different set of duties and ritual prescriptions for each caste, and a person's fate in the next life is governed mainly by how well she performs these duties.

Hindus recognize female as well as male gods, but hold that ultimately the divine force is beyond such categories, since it is found in all living beings. Hinduism accepts the possibility of numerous different religious standpoints and does not draw a clear line between believers and nonbelievers. There are almost as many Hindus as Muslims—about 750 million—however, they are virtually all situated in India. Hinduism, unlike Christianity and Islam, is not a form of religious outlook that seeks to convert others into "true believers."

Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism

The ethical religions of the East encompass Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. These religions acknowledge no gods, at least not in a sense akin to the Christian God or Allah. Rather, they emphasize ethical ideals that relate the believer to the natural cohesion and unity of the universe.

Buddhism derives from the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (Enlightened One), who was a Hindu prince in a small kingdom in south Nepal in the sixth century B.C. According to the Buddha, human beings can escape the reincarnation cycle by renouncing desire. The path of salvation lies in a life of self-discipline and meditation, separated from the

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tasks of the mundane world. The overall objective of Buddhism is the attainment of Nirvana, complete spiritual fulfillment. The Buddha rejected Hindu ritual and the authority of the castes. Like Hinduism, however, Buddhism tolerates local variations, including belief in local deities, and does not insist on an exclusivist view. Buddhism today is a major influence in states in the Far East such as Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, and Korea.

Confucianism was the basis of the culture of the ruling groups in traditional China. "Confucius" is the latinized form of Kung Futzu, who lived in the sixth century B.C., the same period as Buddha. Confucius was a teacher, not a religious prophet in the manner of Judaism or Islam. He is seen by his followers not as a god, but as "the wisest of wise men." Confucianism seeks to adjust human life to the inner harmony of nature and emphasizes the veneration of ancestors.

Taoism shares similar principles, stressing meditation and nonviolence as means to the higher life. Like Confucius, Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism, was a sixth-century-B.C. teacher. Although some principles survive in the practices of many Chinese, Confucianism and Taoism lost much of their influence in China as a result of determined opposition from the Communist government—an opposition now becoming less harsh, however, than it used to be.

FOR UNIT VI

I. This time you have to read and translate the following English text into the Russian language.

LAW AND ORDER IN INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

Aggression is the name we give to the crime of war. We know the crime because of our knowledge of the peace it interrupts—not the mere absence of fighting, but peace-with-rights, a condition of liberty and security that can exist only in the absence of aggression itself. The wrong the aggressor commits is to force men and women to risk their lives for the sake of their rights. It is to confront them with the choice: your rights or (some of) your lives! Groups of citizens respond in different ways to that choice, sometimes surrendering, sometimes fighting, depending on the moral and material condition of their State and army. But they are always justified in fighting; and in most cases, given that harsh choice, fighting is

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the morally preferred response. The justification and the preference are very important: they account for the most remarkable features of the concept of aggression and for the special place it has in the theory of war.

Aggression is remarkable because it is the only crime that states can commit against other states: everything else is, as it were, a misdemeanor. There is a strange poverty in the language of international law. The equivalents of domestic assault, armed robbery, extortion, assault with intent to kill, murder in all its degrees, have but one name. Every violation of the territorial integrity or political sovereignty of an independent state is called aggression. It is as if we were to brand as murder all attacks on a man’s person, all attempts to coerce him, all invasions of his home. This refusal of differentiation makes it difficult to mark off the relative seriousness of aggressive acts—to distinguish, for example, the seizure of a piece of land or the imposition of a satellite regime from conquest itself, the destruction of a state’s independence (a crime for which Abba Eban, Israel’s foreign minister in 1967, suggested the name “policide”). But there is a reason for the refusal. All aggressive acts have one thing in common: they justify forceful resistance, and force cannot be used between nations, as it often can between persons, without putting life itself at risk. Whatever limits we place on the means and range of warfare, fighting a limited war is not like hitting somebody. Aggression opens the gates of hell.

At the same time, aggression unrevised is aggression still, though there is no “fall of blood" at all. In domestic society, a robber who gets what he wants without killing anyone is obviously less guilty, that is, guilty of a lesser crime, than if he commits murder. As summing that the robber is prepared to kill, we allow the behavior of his victim to determine his guilt. We don’t do this in the case of aggression. Consider, for example, the German seizures of Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1939. The Czechs did not resist; they lost their independence through extortion rather than war; no Czech citizens died fighting the German invaders. The Poles chose to fight, and many were killed in the war that followed. But if the conquest of Czechoslovakia was a lesser crime, we have no name for it. At Nuremberg, the Nazi leadership was charged with aggression in both cases and found guilty in both. Once again, there is a reason for this identity of treatment. We judge the Germans guilty of aggression in Czechoslovakia, because of our profound conviction that they ought to have been resisted— though not necessarily by their abandoned victim, standing alone.

The state that does resist, whose soldiers risk their lives and die, does so because its leaders and people think that they should or that they have to

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fight back. Aggression is morally as well as physically coercive, and that is one of the most important things about it. “A conqueror,” writes Clausewitz, “is always a lover of peace (as Bonaparte always asserted of himself); he would like to make his entry into our state unopposed; in order to prevent this, we must choose war. If ordinary men and women did not ordinarily accept that imperative, aggression would not seem to us so serious a crime. If they accepted it in certain sorts of cases, but not in others, the single concept would begin to break down, and we would eventually have a list of crimes more or less like the domestic list. The challenge of the streets, “Your money or your life!” is easy to answer: I surrender my money and so I save myself from being murdered and the thief from being a murderer. But we apparently don’t want the challenge of aggression answered in the same way; even when it is, we don’t diminish the guilt of the aggressor. He has violated rights to which we attach enormous importance. Indeed, we are inclined to think that the failure to defend those rights is never due to a sense of their unimportance; nor even to a belief (as in the street-challenge case) that they are; after all, worth less than life itself, but only to a stark conviction that the defense is hopeless. Aggression is a singular and undifferentiated crime because, in all its forms, it challenges rights that are worth dying for.

Now you have to discuss the following questions

1.Please, define aggression.

2.How do citizens respond to an aggression?

3.Is fighting aggression morally justified? Why?

4.Who can commit aggression?

5.If the state does not resist an aggression and submit, would it still be a war crime?

6.Please, name two examples of an aggression.

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FOR UNIT VII

I. This time you have to read and translate the following English text into the Russian language

THE ROLE OF AID (AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT) IN PEACEBUILDING

How can development and humanitarian assistance help prevent violent conflict and build sustainable peace? It is important to recognize that aid cannot promote peace on its own, but should be part of a package of foreign policy measures toward a conflict-affected country or subregion. Other relevant instruments include policy dialogue; preventive diplomacy; cultural, trade, and investment policies; and military cooperation. To be effective, policy coherence between these instruments is required, which means that they all should be applied with peace as the ultimate objective in mind.

There are three main areas, in which relief, rehabilitation, and development aid can play a positive role in promoting peace: long-term conflict prevention, supporting peace processes, and addressing localized violence.

Aid has the potential to address the structural conditions (or root causes) that produce violent conflict, such as social exclusion, lack of political participation, unaccountable public institutions, and lack of personal security. It can also support people in creating institutions for the peaceful resolution of social conflict and empower them to become involved in conflict prevention initiatives. Such fundamental social transformations can only be achieved in a long-term perspective. Despite ever-shortening funding cycles? Aid does have the capacity to offer such long-term commitment and support to countries at risk of violent conflict.

During war-peace transitions and in postconflict situations, aid can help prepare the ground for sustainable peace. Experience has shown that political negotiations (Track 1) are unlikely to lead to a lasting peace agreement if they are not supported by a peace process that goes down to the grassroots.

The social groundwork for peace is based on the triangle of participation material benefit, and security. In the early stages of the peace process, aid can support citizens in creating social spaces for dialogue, generating public Pressure for peace, and formulating a people-focused

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peace agenda. During peace negotiations, their role as facilitators, mediators, and witnesses can be strengthened, while later their participation in the process of reconciliation and building structures to sustain peace is essential. Aid for postconflict rehabilitation and reconstruction can help build trust in the peace process by offering real material improvements to people (such as new business or employment opportunities) and making sure that the "peace dividend" is distributed equally among the population. The transformation from a culture of violence to a culture of peace requires that people can trust in their personal security and the institutions of justice. Prudent support for a reform of the security services can assist in bringing about this change.

Development aid can support communities in dealing with localized forms of violence and conflict. Such violence can range from cattle rustling in rural Kenya to gang violence in the urban center of Latin America. These conflicts are often associated with a high number of unemployed (male) youth, the ready availability of small arms, and a deep disregard for the value of the individual life. In this context, aid can assist people to develop community-based security systems; it can address the material preconditions of violence and support local mediation efforts. Traditional ways of conflict resolution can be very effective in these situations and should be explored and strengthened.

II. Now you have to discuss the following questions

1.What are the main areas of peacebuilding process in which development aid can play a positive role?

2.Can aid be effective on its own in conflict resolution?

3.What are the three key elements of peace?

4.What is the role of aid in postconflict rehabilitation and reconstruction?

5.Please, demonstrate some examples of how aid can support communities in dealing with localized forms of violence and conflict?

III. You have to provide the brief summary of the text using the expressions from Unit 2

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