Уста­но­ви­те со­от­вет­ствие между тек­ста­ми A–G и за­го­лов­ка­ми 1–8. За­пи­ши­те свои от­ве­ты в таб­ли­цу. Ис­поль­зуй­те каж­дую цифру толь­ко один раз. В за­да­нии один за­го­ло­вок лиш­ний.

1. A lasting relationship

2. An inspirational city

3. An unexpected discovery

4. A brilliant celebration

5. A random birthday

6. Undestroyed beauty

7. The future of the city

8. Not intellectual enough

A. Nobody knows when Moscow first appeared on the face of the earth. It is true that the first mention of Moscow dates back to 1147, but by that time it had probably been around for a while and was big enough to be mentioned in the Russian chronicles. Still, it is convenient to use that date to celebrate Moscow’s anniversaries which we are doing this year – Moscow has turned 870, a respectable age for one of the biggest capitals in the world!

B. Throughout its history, Moscow has been visited by many English speakers. The first British people arrived in Moscow in 1553 by accident. In the age of great geographical discoveries, when Spanish and Portuguese navigators were

sailing the world in search of the shortest way to Asia, British merchants tried to find their own way – through the Arctic. When they were stopped by ice, they turned their ships south and ended up in Russia.

C. Ivan the Terrible was happy to meet the first English merchants and granted them privileges to make trade between Russia and Britain easy. This was how The Muscovy Company appeared in Britain. The Czar even granted them a house near the Kremlin. This solid brick building has survived all the fires of Moscow and can be visited today. In 1994, during Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Moscow, it was turned into a museum – The Old English Court.

D. Mr Francis Pargiter was one of the merchants of The Muscovy Company and visited Moscow in the 1660s. He did not leave a written account of his trip, but his impressions of Moscow were recorded by his friend – Samuel Pepys, a

Member of Parliament who kept a diary. Mr Pargiter described Moscow as ‘a very great city’ but mostly with wooden houses and with very few people playing chess and ‘not a man that speaks Latin’!

E. In 1867, Moscow’s 720th anniversary, a trip to Moscow was undertaken by the author of “Alice in Wonderland”, Lewis Carrol. He described Moscow as a ‘wonderful city, a city of white houses and green roofs, of conical towers that rise one out of another like a telescope; of bulging glided domes, in which you can see as in looking glass, distorted pictures of the city.’ It is believed that the idea of “Through the Looking Glass” came to the writer during his trip to Russia.

F. In 1917, during the restless days of the Revolution, when not many people even remembered Moscow’s 770th anniversary, Moscow was visited by the American journalist John Reed. Among the fires and destroyed buildings, he

was happy to see St. Basil’s Cathedral untouched: ‘Late at night we went through the empty streets to the great Red Square. The church of Vasili Blazheiny loomed fantastic, its bright-coloured cupolas vague in darkness’.

G. In 1947, the American writer John Steinbeck witnessed Moscow’s 800th anniversary celebration. ‘The walls of the Kremlin and its towers were outlined in electric lights. Every public building was floodlighted. In every public square dance stands had been put up, and in some of the squares little booths, made to look like Russian fairy-tale houses, had been erected for sale of sweets, and ice-cream, and souvenirs’, he wrote in his Russian Journal.