Топик: Outstanding people

- What did Konstantin Tsiolkovsky do later in life?

- In the final 18 years of his life, Tsiolkovsky continued his re search on a wide variety of scientific problems. His contributions to stratospheric exploration and interplanetary flight were particularly noteworthy and played a significant role in contemporary astronautics. In 1919 Tsiolkovsky was elected to the Academy of Sciences.

- Russia is proud of its outstanding painters. Who are going to talk about?

- My talk is about Vassily Perov. He was the leader of the critical movement of the 1860s. In his paintings Perov expressed his protest against the unjustness of society. The son of a public prosecutor, Perov studied at Arzamas at the Art School of Alexander Stupin. During the 1850s Perov attended the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Pavel Fedotov's domestic scenes, William Hogarth's pictorial satire and genre painting of the "Little masters" had a great influence on Perov. In his early works the artist criticized social behaviour. Perov's compositions show the painter's profound knowledge of the people's routine life. Perov reached the peak of his success as a genre painter in the later half of the 1860s.

- Can you tell us about one of Perov's well-known works of art?

- "The Last Inn at the City Gate" (or "The Last Pub") is considered to be one of the best art works of Russian painting. The artist depicts the city outskirts on a dark winter evening. A sledge in front of the inn, the sign "Parting", a girl in the cold street, the city gate with the Russian coats of arms and the road to nowhere - all these attain a symbolic meaning. The dark, muted colours convey the feeling of loneliness in the cold estranged world.

- What other paintings were created by Perov?

- Perov was the founding-member of the Wanderers. During the 1870s he created portraits of such outstanding Russian personalities as Alexander Ostrovsky and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Perov's genre paintings of the 1870s present a sympathetic and humorous, rather than tragic treatment of everyday life. The "Hunters Resting", of 1871, became one of the most popular Russian Realism canvases.

- What trend did Perov turn to at the end of his career?

- In his later life like other Wanderers, Perov turned to monumental historical paintings. "Nikita Pustosvyat. The Dispute about Faith", is very expressive. The Wanderers contributed much to the development of Russian historical painting, the peak of which is the brilliant canvases of Vassily Surikov.

- What movement did Perov's works of art foreshadow?

- Perov's work was extremely varied and at times showed un expected stylistic potential. Some of his late religious and allegorical paintings foreshadowed Symbolism and Art Nouveau.

- Who were Perov's pupils?

- Perov was a perfect teacher. From 1871 he taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Among his pupils were Nikolay Kasatkin, Sergey Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov and Andrei Ryabushkin.

- Can you tell us about an outstanding British politician?

- I can tell you about Winston Churchill. This formidable politician became Prime Minister in May 1940. This was one of the rare moments when events and the man were to be perfectly matched. Winston Churchill, then aged sixty four, saw himself as destined for the part.

- What kind of man was Winston Churchill?

- Sir Winston Churchill led Great Britain from the brink of de feat to victory as wartime prime minister. He was not only a determinant leader, author, orator, and statesman he perfectly knew the history of the country, and was powerful enough to hold people together. Yet Winston Churchill was a man of contrasts. He was a democrat unable to see that Britain's colonial subjects deserved democracy too; decisive, yet a poor manager of his own cabinet; far-sighted and effective in his own view and practice of global diplomacy, stubbornly wrong-headed at times about military strategy. Winner of the most crucial war in Britain's history he was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs.

- What did Winston Churchill do in his youth?

- In his youth, in India, Sudan and the Boer war, Winston Churchill was a daring officer and a war correspondent. After a sensational rise to prominence in national politics before World War I, he acquired a reputation for erratic judgement in the war itself and in the decade that followed.

- What do you know about Winston Churchill's activity from 1939 onward?

- Politically suspect in consequence, he was a lonely figure until his response to Adolf Hitler's challenge brought him to leader ship of a national coalition in 1940. With Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin he shaped Allied strategy in World War II, and after the breakdown of the alliance he alerted the West to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union. He led the Conservative Party back to office in 1951 and remained prime minister until 1955, when ill health forced his resignation.

- Can tell us about a great British poet?

- Yes, certainly. I shall to tell you about Lord Byron, an English Romantic poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. Renowned as the "gloomy egoist" of his autobiographical poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" in the 19th century, he is now more generally esteemed for the satiric realism of "Don Juan".

- What family did Byron come from?

- Byron came from a well-to-do family but his father squandered most of his mother fortune. At the age of 10, Byron unexpectedly inherited the title and estates of his great-uncle William, the 5th Baron Byron. Byron went to Harrow, one of the most prestigious schools of England. In 1805 Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge.

- Were Byron's first books popular?

- In 1806 Byron had his early poems privately printed in a volume entitled "Fugitive Pieces". Byron's first published volume of poetry "Hours of Idleness" appeared in 1807. A sarcastic critique of the book in "The Edinburgh Review" provoked his retaliation in 1809 with a couplet satire "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" in which he attacked the contemporary literary scene. This work gained him his first recognition.

- Was Byron interested in politics?