Match the words in column A with their synonyms in column B

Column A	Column B
1. remote	a. crowd, throng
2. oppressive	b. to walk
3. gaudy	c. terrible, frightful
4. flock	d. far-off, out-of-the-way
5. to saunter	e. striking, startling
6. hawkish	f. painful, excruciating
7. formidable	g. garish, flashy
8. garrulous	h. talkative, chattering
9. agonizing	i. harsh, merciless, tyrannical
10. astounding	j. militant

Work out the meaning of the expressions below. Then write down their Russian equivalents.

1.frontier post
2. to hold back the tide
3. under a successor
4. to adopt diplomatic relations
5. to join discussions
6. to keep old virtues
7. trousers flared in a forgotten mode
8. creative potential
9. to face price rises
10. to be squeezed agonisingly against
11. to be astoundingly poor
12. to strike against wage cuts

Read the article below. You must decide which of paragraphs A-F best fits into the numbered gaps 1-6 in the following article.

Albania’s dam against time

It began to grow light soon after we had left Albania. We had walked through the darkness of no-man’s-land, carrying our luggage, to the Yugoslav frontier post. Now, in the dawn, we stared in amazement at the first village in this remote corner of Montenegro. There were neat, newly-plastered cottages, little peasant fields, cars parked and men in jeans getting into them. What world was this?

1.

Important dreams are not only visually intense, but tell of the dreamer’s own distant memories and longings. I went on a brief five-day coach tour of Albania, with a party of Observer readers. We were bewildered, sometimes repelled, but sometimes strangely moved by what we saw.

2.

In the towns, under the blazing red portraits of the late Enver Hoxha, crowds of young men move at an aimless, sauntering pace up and down the empty streets – no private cars are allowed in Albania. There are thin brown men in polo-necked sweaters and thin brown suits, with trousers flared in an almost forgotten mode. They have hawkish faces and a dark formidable stare. There is no noise of traffic, only the sound of feet.

This tiny Balkan nation of three million people is the most isolated and totalitarian state on earth. Enver Hoxha’s partisans claim to have liberated themselves from Italian and German occupation (British military aid is written out of history). In 1948, Hoxha broke with Yugoslavia. In 1960, he broke with the Soviet Union. In 1977, he broke with China, whose ageing lorries, locomotives, and bicycles still serve the land. Albania borrows no money, and belongs to almost no international bodies. Last year, a mere 7,500 foreign tourists were admitted to the land.

Statues and busts of Joseph Stalin stand in every town. This the extreme of Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’, of his total central control of all life by Party and State, of the ‘cult of personality’ he founded. Enver’s face is in every institution, Enver’s numerous books on sale in every hotel and museum, Enver’s words on every vertical surface, Enver’s name carved across mountains.

3.

‘We are a serious people’, said one. But they have kept old Mediterranean virtues: hospitality, impulsive generosity (a pot plant, a pen, a round of drinks presented by strangers when the English language was heard), a talent for wild rejoicing seen at a wedding I gate-crashed, the leisurely, garrulous public life of square and street corner. For some of us, it was rural Italy after the war; for others, Serbia in the early 1950s.

‘Where is the boundary here between consent and coercion?’ wondered a Scottish lecturer. After only five days, one cannot begin to know. A few young people cursed the system. Many showed a desperate, hopeless, longing to travel. ‘I want to kiss the English earth!’ said one. ‘Life is short. Here, I am poor boy. There, I am free.’ One thing seems clear: out of an illiterate, semi-tribal province, the Hoxha regime has created a highly-educated people (many of the young speak phenomenally good English) whose creative potential is now squeezed agonisingly against the iron limits of the system.

4.

While we were there, Romanians were rioting for bread, Hungarians were storming shops, Yugoslavs were striking against wage cuts and Poles were facing enormous price rises. Albania is insulated against the good things of modern life, but also against some of the bad.

5.

I think that life for those young figures pacing and drifting in Tirana’s Scanderberg Square – ‘like a living Lowry painting’ said one of us – will soon be different: less secure, more interesting.

Some things, though, won’t change. Albania’s neighbours, great and small, have always tried to manipulate and dominate her. ‘If the sea became yoghurt,’ runs a saying, ‘the Albanians would not be given a spoon.’

6.

Neal Ascherson “The Observer”

7. A But Enver Hoxha is dead. After consuming all his real or imagined rivals, sent to execution or to labour camps, he died in 1985. And under his successor, Ramiz Alia, there are the first small signs of change. Albania is now joining discussions with its Balkan neighbours. West Germany adopted diplomatic relations a few weeks ago. The ‘state of war’ with Greece ended in January after 47 years, and our hotel was invaded by a Greek delegation of three Ministers – including Melina Mercouri. There are fewer armed men about. And, with caution, ordinary Albanians are beginning to talk to foreigners.

B The slogans may fade; the pill-boxes crumble – as they are beginning to. But Albanians of all opinions feel that they built their country themselves; foreign helpers always ended by trying to take over. Whatever happens, Albania will remain the hedgehog of Europe.

C It was like awakening from a strange, brilliant dream. At Titograd, there were traffic and gaudy advertisements; the shininess and haste grew more oppressive at Belgrade. At Heathrow, members of our tour party clung together, reluctant finally to wake up.

D How long can Albania hold up its dam against time? Perhaps Ramiz Alia is like King Canute, who did not claim that he could hold back the tide but showed his fanatical courtiers that he could not. A mountainous country not much larger than Wales, whose population has grown from 1.6 million in 1960 to over three million today, will soon be unable to feed itself. That means opening to the world. So does the need to modernize equipment, after ten years of isolation.

E Patriotism, if not love of the Party, unites all Albanians. They are astoundingly poor, but at least they are properly fed. Electricity is now everywhere, and the land is full of large, decrepit factories slowly producing the basic needs of life, mines exporting chrome ore and copper, dams exporting hydro-electricity. They are equal: nobody earns more than twice anyone else, although the ruling elite – with its chauffeured Mercedes and Volvos – is more equal than others.

F The coach ground along between white mountains and green, cultivated plains, edged with gold leaves of Mediterranean autumn. In the vast collective fields, flocks of women in white headscarves dug drains or weeded. Sometimes the bus braked to avoid a brigade of girls walking along the road with shouldered spades – figures from an old Maoist poster – or to overtake carts drawn by horses or oxen.