II. Read and translate the text: Karaganda – My Native City
Karaganda, situated in Central Kazakhstan, is the second largest city in Kazakhstan after Almaty. It has a population about 500,000. It‘s one of the major industrial and cultural centres of the Rebublic. The industry has developed here on the basis of the Karaganda coal deposits. The industries closely related with coal mining, light and food industries have also developed here. The present-day Karaganda is a city of miners, machine-builders, scientists and students. There are several universities, a TV centre, three theatres, a Museum of Regional Studies, a circus, a botanical garden, a zoo, parks, sports palaces and stadiums, etc.
The famous Kazakh steppe Sary-Arka where Karaganda is situated can be translated from Kazakh into English as the Golden Steppe. It’s green only in spring and in June everything is faded and the steppe becomes golden-yellow. Karagan (yellow acacia bushes), tamarisk, zhuzgun, feather-grass, wormwood (absinth) grow here.
The rivers in the Karaganda region are very scarse and carry little water. The names of the rivers that flow here are translated as Dry, Blind, Waterless. They are named so because in summer they dry up partly or fully. The longest river of the region is the Nura.
The climate of the Karaganda region is sharply continental. Earlier the minimum temperature in January was 40 degrees below zero. It was strengthened with stormy winds. But at present because of global warming the minimum temperature in winter doesn’t exceed 10-15 degrees below zero. The maximum temperature in June is 40 degrees above zero.
For centuries the whole territory of the Karaganda region was the mute (silent) monotonous steppe covered with hard and wild bush karagan that grew here in abundance. From this shrub the city got its name.
There are several legends about the find of coal in the Karaganda land. One of them is as follows:
In 1833 Appak Baizhanov, the young Kazakh shepherd, pasturing the master’s herd on the territory of the present Karaganda made a fire and threw a black stone into it. The stone flamed up. It was coal. But only in the middle of the 19th century (1856) the Russian merchant Ushakov having heard of it, bought the pasture with coal by the area of 100 square kilometers for 250 roubles.
The Russian merchants began extracting coal for the Spassky copper-smelting plant. But the great distance from the railway station (600-700 kilometers, the main means of transport was camel), the shortage of necessary means, the indifference of the tsarist government to the development of industry in Karaganda led (brought) to the crash of the company.
At the beginning of the 20th century the Russian merchants sold the mines and the plant to the French capitalist Carno, who in two years resold them to the English people with profit (gain).
Until 1934 when the construction of the new city began, there were only a few miners’ settlements.
During the years of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 the Karaganda industrial region turned into the country’s powerful arsenal and supplied the country with coal together with the Kuzbass because the Donbass was temporally occupied by fascists. Kazakhstanskaya Magnitka, the Karaganda steel works, now called Mittal Steel, began to produce steel for the front. After finishing the war the coal industry of Karaganda became to develop rapidly.
N
owadays
Karaganda is an up-to-date city. It is not only an industrial, but a
cultural centre, too. There are three theatres in Karaganda. They
are the Kazakh Drama theatre named after Saken Seifullin, the
founder of the Kazakh Soviet literature, the Russian Drama theatre
after Konstantin Stanislavsky, a famous stage director, and the
Musical Comedy theatre, the only in Kazakhstan. The drama theatres
were founded in the 30’s
of the last century when the construction of Karaganda began.
The Botanical Garden plays an important role in planting greenery in Karaganda. It studies the arboreal and shrub races (breeds, species) and uses them in the planting of g Nurken Abdirov Sports Palace greenery in Central Kazakhstan. At present maple, karagach, larch, fir-tree, birch-tree, poplar, pine and other trees and bushes grow here.
If your friend from another city arrives in Karaganda for the first time, to get an idea of the city you will keep him company and take him around the city and show straight and broad streets and avenues. There are streams of buses, trolley-buses and cars in the streets, crowds of people crossing the streets in different directions. The busiest thoroughfare, Bukhar Zhyrau Avenue, was erected after the design of Moscow architects in 1930. The Miners‘ Palace of Culture built in 1951, one of the finest buildings of the city, faced with marble and granite in Bukhar Zhyrau Avenue will make a great impression on your friend. Crossing the street underground you will find yourselves near the Miners’ Glory monument erected by the Karaganda sculptor Bilyk. The Sports Palace in Nurken Abdirov Avenue which is one of the greatest places of interest of the town will attract your friend’s attention. Opposite the Palace there is a monument to the Karaganda pilot Nurken Abdirov who in 1942 rammed his burning plane into a column of fascist tanks.
Andrian Nikolaev and Pavel Popovich, and in 1963 greeted the first woman-cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. The Chaika hotel is called so in memory of staying Valentina Tereshkova here.
The abundance of trees is a distinctive feature of Peace Boulevard, Chkalov Street, Lenin Street. Peace Boulevard, some 80 metres wide, with almost two kilometers of different trees will lead you to the Karaganda Technical University.
Chaika Hotel
Welcome to Karaganda!