Drawing back the curtain” by Denis Healey

This text was written by Denis Healey. He is a prolific journalist and broadcaster and a British Labour politician as well. “Drawing back the curtain” was taken from his autobiography “The Time of My Life” (1989).

The author tells the reader about his impressions about Russia. He focuses on the difference of perception of Russia before and after visiting this country. He marked that earlier his generation was largely influenced by George Orwell’s 1984 that distorted the reality about the Soviet Union. But then his short visits to Russia cured him of any erratic illusions.

This text belongs to the publicist style. This style has characteristic features of the style of scientific prose or official documents and that of emotive prose. On account of coherent and logical syntactic structure, an expanded system of connectives and careful paragraphing the publicist style is close to scientific prose. On the other hand, the use of words with emotive meaning, the use of imagery and other stylistic devices make this style close to emotive prose.

Publicist texts carry pragmatic function. That means that the main aim of these texts is to convince the reader that the interpretation given by the writer is the only correct one. The author reached his aim not merely by logical argumentation, but by emotional appeal as well.

As a rule, publicist texts are addressed to a broad audience and devoted to important social or political events, public problems and this text is not an exception.

The text is written in the first person singular. It is taken from autobiography. It strengthens the effect produced on the reader. This type of narration makes the text more personal and convincing.

The author uses logical reasoning. He puts the events in their chronological sequence that makes the text easy to comprehend. D. Healey uses a fair amount of connectives to underline the cohesiveness of the text (moreover, after the war, at the beginning, yet in fact, by comparison with, on the contrary, however, above all). The author uses a lot of terms and professionalisms referring to the field of politics (Soviet Communism, the Communist Party, Stalinism, socialist state, Soviet culture, propaganda, the Foreign Office, the liberal programme, Labour Party delegation, anti-Semitism). The author uses one quotation describing Krushchev (He was one of the half-dozen greatest political leaders of this country…). By the introduction of this quotation the author makes himself distant from the utterance. Thus, the utterance becomes more objective, precise and convincing.

As far as syntax is concerned, the sentences are compound and not elliptical. Most of them are polisyndetic or with extended attributive phrases (The colleges which taught foreign languages and international affairs were giving a rounded education to able young men and women, who are now in key positions in their country, where their knowledge of the outside world is invaluable).

All the devices, which are mentioned above, display the partial belonging of the text to the scientific prose.

On the other hand, the author uses epithets, words with emotive meaning (erratic illusions, shrewd and courteous Bulgarin, drastic revision, rippling sinuosity, hair-raising obscenity). Such words make the narration more vivid and dynamic. They are full of subjective coloring and reflect personal opinion of the author. Moreover, D. Healey uses metaphors (a flood of books; to carry the seeds of its own destruction; to carry a chip on one’s shoulder). They also add emotional coloring to the text.

The author describes two main Russian cities: St. Petersburg and Moscow. He gives a superb comparison (by comparison with the 18^th century canals of Leningrad, which might have been part of Amsterdam or Bremen, the Kremlin brought us to the heart of old Russia). D. Healey meticulously described the cultural life in Russia. He adds the description about the Hermitage, summer palace of Peter the Great, The Moscow Arts Theatre and the Bolshoi in order to underline the signs of the cultural thaw in Russia.

Epithets, metaphors and comparisons serve the purpose of emotional intensification of the utterance. The text is made up not as a dry matter-of-fact, but also expresses the author’s opinion. F.ex. It was now clear that the picture which the West had painted of the Soviet Union in the early post-war years needed drastic revision. The author underlines the thought how much the West is misled.

The author comes to a conclusion that the Russian, like us, were human beings, although they were not human beings like us. It can be interpreted in a way that no matter how long you study Russians, it is too difficult to comprehend them completely.

Analysis

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