Culture of the Don Land. Учебное пособие

It was here in Rostov that he got married and got acquainted with the professor Orlov, who supervised the eyehospital in Rostov.

There is a memorial plaque in one of the houses in Bolshaya Sadovaya Street in honour of Pavlov's visits to Rostov.

Alexander Popov

The names of Alexander Popov and Ivan Pavlov are associated with Rostov too. In 1901 the great Russian scientist, an inventor of radio A. Popov worked in our river port. In order of deepening the Don delta Popov was invited to Rostov to build the civil radio stations in the port.

These radio stations played a great role for the river traffic, giving the information about the levelof water in the river. The radio stations facilitated the normal work of the Rostov port, which became a major trading centre at the end of the XIX and at the beginning of the XX century.

Nikolai Bogoraz

Nikolay Bogoraz is a pride of Russian medicine. His contribution to medical science is invaluable and his name is a symbol of the civil courage.

An outstanding teacher, a statesman he created the wellknown in our country school of surgeons. Bogoraz was born in Taganrog but was educated at Petersburg, at the military academy of medicine. In 1909 he defended a doctor's thesis in which he showed himself as a talented explorer, a real scientist, innovator, a broad-minded specialist.

In 1913 Bogoraz was a holder of the chair of hospital surgery of Warsaw University, which in the years of the war was evacuated to Rostov. Bogoraz moved here too. He has worked in Rostov more than for 28 years and has operated hundreds of people brilliantly. This courageous doctor has written numerous scientific works and was the first who offered and incul-

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cated into medical practice the new method of treatment of the stomach ulcer.

Bogoraz's love to people and his faithfulness to the science were unlimited. In 1920 hurrying up to his clinic, the doctor had a tram accident and both of his legs were amputated. With artificial limbs Bogoraz continued to work more than before. His charm and talent are remembered by thousands of people saved by him. During the Great Patriotic War doctor Bogoraz worked in Tashkent and Moscow, he was awarded the state prize and some orders. He has lived long and happy life and died in 1952. We, Rostovites, are proud of our countryman Nikolay Bogoraz.

Vera Panova

Vera Panova – the famous Russian writer was born in Rostov In 1905. Her books are well-known not only in Rostov region but also all over the country. She depicted the life of our countrymen and their original speech in her books. She began her literary career just in Rostov, working with N.Pogodin and A.Fadyeev. Most of her works are devoted to children and teenagers. Her main and favourite occupation has become journalism for many years. For 17 years Vera Panova has worked in the 'editorial board of the newspaper «Trudovoi Don».

She loved theatre very much and gave it much of her time. Panova worked together with the famous producers such as Yuri Zavadsky and A.Tairov, G.Tovstonogov and M.Okhlopkov, S.Gerasimov and S.Bondarchuk. In 1960 the screen version of Panova's famous book «Seryozha» got the main prize of the international film festival – the Crystal Globe. To the end of her life Vera Panova didn't stop working and succeeded in writing the big autobiographical manuscript under the title «About My

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Life. Books and Readers». There is a street named after this talented writer in our city.

Yevgeni Vuchetich

The work of Yevgeny Vuchetich, people's artist of our country, vice-president of the Academy of Arts, was closely associated with our region. He was born in 1908 in Dnepropetrovsk.Yevgeny Vuchetich was educated at Rostov School of Arts and later at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad.

In July 1941 Vuchetich volunteered for the front and he went through «all the hardships of the war and suffered shellshock. All his creative powers and tremendous talent as a sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich devoted to glorifying the heroic exploits of Russian people. The sculptor created his monuments, directly influenced by his experiences in the war victories. That is why they seem so alive with the spirit of the time. The main sculpture in Treptov-park in Berlin is the monument to the soldier-liberator that has become the symbol of the Soviet people's historic Victory over fascism. The artist's greatest achievement is the wonderful sculptural memorial in Volgograd to the heroes of the battle on the Volga. The main monument is Motherland on the top of Mamayev hill. The entire memorial complex is very impressive. The world-famous composition «We shall beat our swords into ploughshares», which stands in front of the building of the United Nations in NewYork is also his work.

Yevgeny Vuchetich has made more than 40 busts of generals, officers and soldiers. More than 10 cities in our country have monuments designed by Yevgeny Vuchetich but part of his heart for ever stayed in Rostov, the city which gave the life to his works. The architect-academician Vladimir Shchuko, one of the authors of the Drama Theatre design influenced Yevgeny Vuchetich very much. Living in Moscow, Yevgeny Vuchetich

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often came to Rostov to his countrymen. Sholokhov, Budyonny busts, the monument to the heroes of the Civil War, which has been erected in front of our region administration building in Rostov, belong to him.

The architectural fountain complex in Theatre Square near the Corky Drama Theatre is his diploma work. In 1974 Yevgeny Vuchetich suddenly died in Moscow. His name is very dear to all the Rostovites and we are proud that his monuments adorn squares and streets of our native city.

Caesar Kunikov

One of the streets of our city bears the name of the man, who has left his imprint in the history of our city. This man is Caesar Kunikov. There is a memorial plaque on the house in Bauman street № 35, where the courageous major was born. He was a broad-minded man. Before the Great Patriotic War Caesar graduated from the Industrial Academy and MachineBuilding Institute. He was in charge for heavy industry.

In 1941 Caesar volunteered for the front and organized a naval infantry battalion, which fought bravely with the fascist occupants. Kunikov was a very talented commander. The fast ships equipped with the machineguns were on the guards in the Don delta.

From Azov to Taman Kunikov broke out of enemy encirclement 5 times. He was the first, who was awarded the Alexander Nevsky order. Days and nights fought Kunikov and his combat comrades on the small stripe of land in Novorossiysk against the occupants and on the 14th of February in 1943 the gallant major was fatally wounded and died in Gelendzhik.

A.Pushkin on the Don

The best minds of' Russia were interested in the glorious history of the Don Cossacks. Among them was the greatest

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Russian poet A.Pushkin. He visited the Don region three times between 1828 and 1829.

First time it was in 1828. Being in exile for his freedomloving verses, Pushkin fell ill. His friend and hero of Patriotic War of 1812 N.Rayevsky found him in Yekaterinoslav and asked the authorities of this prison to allow Pushkin to come to the Caucasus with them in order to undergo a cure.

The way to the Caucasus lay through the Don lands. Having arrived to Aksai, Pushkin and Rayevsky decided to visit the old nest of Cossacks Cherkassk at all costs. To that time it had been degraded. On the 8th of June 1820 they went to stanitsa Starocherkaskaya by boat. On their way there the trevellers noticed from far away the green cupolas of Cherkassk churches. But what struck them most of all was the huge construction of Voskresensky cathedral, which dominated the other churches.

The first church visited by Pushkin was Petropavlovskaya church. The old-timers of Starocherkasskaya told him that in 1751 here the famous ataman Matvey Platov had been christened and had been buried 7 miles away from Starocherkasskaya two years before. General Rayevsky was shocked. He knew Platov. He defeated the French with Platov in 1812. And the fate had led him to the birthplace of the famous and gallant general.

The guests looked round the house where the ataman of rebels Kondraty Bulavin had lived and was killed by the rich Cossacks.

The most striking sight was Voskresensky cathedral. Since 1719 it has been the main cathedral of the Don army. After they had examined the decoration and the iconostasis of the 18th century in the cathedral Pushkin and Rayevsky prayed where the famous A.Suvorov and Ye.Pugachov, Peter the Great

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and many other princes and emperors had prayed. They saw many magnificent cathedrals. But such marvellous, they had never seen. Full of impressions they returned to Aksai. Later Rayevsky wrote to his daughter: “This degraded into stanitsa town is flooded with water. There are only 700 houses there and some families of the clerks, the others were brought to Cherkassk (Novocherkassk). But the churches were not brought they couldn't bring memory away, because it was the first nest of the Cossacks. In one word, the old Cherkassk will remain as the monument both for the Russians and for the foreign travellers forever.”

All the impressions during his visits to the Don Land Pushkin developed in his works during all his life. Many of his works Pushkin devoted to the Don rebels Stepan Razin and Yemelyan Pugachov.

Mikhail Sholokhov – Biographical

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (1905–1984) was born in the land of the Cossacks, now known as the Kamenskaya region of the R.S.F.S.R. He attended several high schools until 1918. During the civil war he fought on the side of the revolutionaries, and in 1922 he moved to Moscow to become a journalist. There he published a number of short stories in newspapers. He made his literary debut in 1926 with a volume of stories, Donskie rasskazy (Tales from the Don), 1926, about the Cossacks of his native region, to which he had returned two years earlier.

In the same year, 1926, Sholokhov began writing Tikhi Don (And Quiet Flows the Don), 1928–1940, which matured slowly and took him fourteen years to complete. Reminiscent of Tolstoy in its vividly realistic scenes, its stark character descriptions and, above all, its vast panorama of the revolutionary period, Sholokhov's epic became the most read work of So-

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viet fiction. Deeply interested in human destinies which are played against the background of the transformations and troubles in Russia, he unites in his work the artistic heritage of Tolstoy and Gogol with a new vision introduced into Russian literature by Maxim Gorky.

His other major work in the Don cycle, Podnyataya tselina (Virgin Soil Upturned), 1932 and 1959, deals in part with the collectivization of the Don area. There are a number of works such as the short story Sudba cheloveka (The Fate of a Man), 1957 – made into a popular Russian film – which treat the power and the resilience of human love under adversity. His collected works, Sobranie sochineny, were published in eight volumes between 1956 and 1960. In 1932 Sholokhov joined the Communist Party and, on several occasions, has been a delegate to the Supreme Soviets. In 1939 he became a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and later vice president of the Association of Soviet Writers.

Mikhail Sholokhov died on February 21, 1984.

(From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901–1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969.

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.)

Activities:

1. Describe the following characters using the words and word-combinations:

Ye. Vuchetich

A great sculptor, famous, talented, educated at, volunteered for the front, devoted to, seem so alive, the world famous composition, part of his heart, diploma work, the monument.

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Caesar Kunikov

Imprint in the history, naval infantry battalion, supervise, brave, gallant, gifted, fatally wounded.

A.Chekhov

Capable, tall, with light brown hair, gift of improvising funny stories, sense of humour, hated, qualified doctor, selfless, decent, generous, kind-hearted.

2.You have got acquainted with many outstanding people whose names are connected with our region. You can describe them to your guests from another country so that they will be able to imagine these persons well.

3.What do you know about M. Sholokhov and his works?

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Module 5. CULTURAL MOSAIC

The Don State Public Library

Find the answers to the following questions:

1.What do you know about the Don State Public Library?

2.When was Rostov Academic Symphony Orchestra

formed?

3.What makes the basis for the Cossacks Song and Dance Ensemble concert repertory?

4.Who organized Rostov Municipal Jazz Band?

The Don State Public Library (DSPL) is the largest establishment of the kind in the Rostov Region and the South of Russia. Its foundation dates back to January 1886. Today the Library is housed in a new building constructed in 1994, the total occupied area making 17,500 sq m.

The collection of the Library comprises 5,049,934 units referred to every branch of knowledge, among these about 2 million copies of items in special formats. The periodical collection is annually added by 1,500 names.

The rare edition collection amounts to about 30 thous. unique books of the 16th-18th centuries, including 19 manuscripts. The readers are served at two charging desks (books and periodicals delivery) and at 11 specialised departments, as well as at the Library's American and French Information Centres and the German Training Centre.

International conferences and workshops, with the participation of foreign experts, are held in the Library as well.

Film Director Vitaly Yuryev

Vitali Dmitriyevich Yuryev is a well-known Don-land film director, screenwriter, journalist, member of the Union of

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Cinematographers and the Union of Journalists, author of more than twenty films.

Fine lyricism, poetic language, philosophical life conceptualisation, skilful command of the documents used for picture creation, – all these, in combination with the active civil stand of an artist capable of hearing the Time, helped director V.Yuryev create a cycle of documentary films that became a notable phenomenon in the cultural life of not only Don Land, but the whole of Russia as well.

Among the above-mentioned are The Russian House in the Suburbs of Paris, Ivan Bunin, Wanna Go Home So Much..., Maximilian Voloshin, Oh Blue Don, Don't Forget.... Tops Nikola, Mikhail Prishvin's Diaries. These films are united by a single theme of preservation of the spiritual culture of Russia, of those canal values sung in the golden and silver ages of the Russian literature.

The most important thing in Vitali Yuryev's films is deep and sincere interest to people's destinies which clearly reflect the destiny of Russia itself.

Rostov Academic Symphony Orchestra

The Orchestra was formed in the year 1935. At different times it was directed by well-known Russian directors Bruno Berman, Nikolai Anosov, Mark Paverman, Leonid Kats, Roman Kasparov, and Semyon Kogan.

The Orchestra became the winner of the 2nd All-Russian Competition of Symphony Orchestras in 1984. In the year 1994 it was awarded the title of an Academic Orchestra. Now it permanently attracts the attention of well-known performers. The conductor's stand has been occupied by the following renowned conductors: B.Khaikin, K.Eliasberg, K.Kondrashin, K.Esterreicher (Austria), R.Argento (Italy), Yu.Domarkas (Latvia), and others.

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