Notes · RussianUK · A-Levels

The changing Russian city: Москва или Санкт-Петербург

This topic carries the whole of Edexcel's Тема 3, Москва или Санкт-Петербург — Изменения в жизни большого российского города, across all three of its sub-themes: Изменение населения (жизнь в городе; жизнь в пригородах), Общественные проблемы (бездомность; преступность) and Окружающая среда (реконструкция и благоустройство города; загрязнение). Тема 3 is set in the context of Russia only. It sits in a political-life slot rather than a social one for two reasons that are worth stating openly. First, the theme is held together by ONE city — the specification asks the student to study Moscow or Saint Petersburg, not Russian cities in general — and splitting it across two distant topics would break exactly the coherence the examination expects. Second, its material is municipal policy: rehousing programmes, street reconstruction, waste reform, policing and surveillance are politics at city scale, and the two social slots are already fully occupied by the three sub-themes of Тема 1. The notes therefore teach the theme as a single city study, with the Russian needed to describe urban change precisely and the discipline needed to describe a city's problems without caricature.

5 sections~36 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Standard 1 · Advanced 4

T·0555 / 13

Exam profile

AO1 · Understand and respond, in speech and in writing, to spoken Russian about city life, housing and the urban environmentAO2 · Understand and respond, in speech and in writing, to written Russian about urban policy and social problemsAO3 · Manipulate Russian accurately, using a range of lexis and structure to describe change and to weigh a policyAO4 · Show knowledge and understanding of, and respond critically to, change in a large Russian city

Operators:описатьсравнитьобъяснитьпроанализироватьоценитьобосноватьперевести

basic level

At first-year standard the expectation is accurate, specific description of one chosen city: naming districts, transport and problems in Russian, saying what has changed and when, and giving a clear personal view, with secure past and present tenses, correct case after prepositions of place and direction, and correct use of the impersonal constructions Russian prefers for describing what a city does.

higher level

The full A-Level expects a policy to be weighed rather than reported. Who benefits from a rehousing programme and who bears its costs? Why does a city that has visibly improved its centre argue more, not less, about its improvement? Why is homelessness in Russia bound up with a registration system as much as with poverty? Answers must attribute the positions in each argument, use precise terms rather than emotive ones, and deploy short-form participles, reflexive passives, gerunds and correlative comparatives because urban policy in Russian is discussed in exactly that register.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

The changing Russian city: Москва или Санкт-Петербург

Москва или Санкт-Петербург: choosing your city, and why the choice decides the theme#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9RU0 Тема 3 - Москва или Санкт-Петербург: Изменения в жизни большого российского городаDfE GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

Два города, две логики перемен

Fig. 1The theme asks you to choose one city. This is what the choice buys you: Moscow's change is administrative and physical, Saint Petersburg's is a running argument about a protected centre, and both share the suburban growth that is the third sub-theme's real subject.

The title of this theme contains an instruction that most candidates read as a description: Москва или Санкт-Петербург. You are expected to know one city properly, not two cities vaguely, and the difference is visible in every answer. A student who has chosen a city can name its districts, its transport lines, its parks and its arguments; a student who has not falls back on general remarks about big cities that would be true of Manchester. Choose early, choose for a reason, and say which you have chosen when the discussion begins: я выбрал Москву, потому что именно там перемены последних десяти лет заметнее всего. That single sentence tells the examiner that you have studied a case rather than a topic.

The two cities have changed in genuinely different ways, and the contrast is the fastest route into the theme. Moscow has changed by growing and by rebuilding. On 1 July 2012 its territory was enlarged more than twofold in a single administrative act, creating what everyone calls Новая Москва to the south-west; the МЦК ring railway opened in 2016 and the first МЦД through-running diameters in 2019, both of which pulled the suburbs into the daily life of the centre; and the streets of the centre themselves were remade under the programme Моя улица between 2015 and 2018. Saint Petersburg has changed under a different constraint: its historic centre has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1990, so its central argument is not how to rebuild but what may be built and where.

That second argument has a landmark case worth knowing, because it is dated, documented and genuinely contested. A very tall tower was originally proposed for a site close to the historic centre under the name Охта-центр; after sustained public opposition and international concern about the effect on the protected skyline, the project was moved, and it was eventually built further out as the Лахта Центр, completed in 2021 and the tallest building in Europe. Whatever one thinks of the outcome, the episode shows a city arguing publicly about its own shape — which is exactly what Тема 3 is about — and it gives you a concrete example instead of a generalisation. Meanwhile the growth pressure that Moscow absorbed inside its own boundary appeared in Saint Petersburg just outside them, in the very dense high-rise suburbs of Кудрово and Мурино in the surrounding Ленинградская область.

The vocabulary of the theme should be built now and reused throughout. The city: столица, мегаполис, городская среда for the urban environment, район for a district, округ for a larger administrative division, окраина for the outskirts, центр, набережная for an embankment, проспект, переулок. The people: горожанин and горожане, житель, приезжий for someone recently arrived, местные. The housing: новостройка for a new-build, панельный дом, хрущёвка for the low-rise blocks of the 1960s, спальный район for a dormitory district, двор for the courtyard that is the basic unit of Russian residential life. The movement: пробки for traffic jams, метро, электричка for a suburban train, маятниковая миграция for commuting. Learn them as sets, and learn the case each preposition takes with them: в районе, на окраине, за городом, в пригороде, до центра.

Worked example

Paper 2 Section A: translation into Russian, with every decision justified

Translate into Russian. Moscow and Saint Petersburg are often compared, but they have changed in different ways. In 2012 the territory of Moscow was enlarged more than twofold, and new railway lines have brought the suburbs closer to the centre. Saint Petersburg, whose historic centre is protected by UNESCO, argues about something quite different: what may be built, and where.

Moscow and Saint Petersburg are often compared
Москву и Санкт-Петербург часто сравнивают. The English passive becomes the Russian third-person-plural impersonal, which the grammar list names as the way to avoid a passive construction. Both city names go into the accusative: Москву takes the regular feminine ending, while Санкт-Петербург is masculine inanimate and therefore identical to the nominative. Getting Москву right and leaving Санкт-Петербург unchanged in the same sentence is a small but visible piece of control.
but they have changed in different ways
но менялись они по-разному. Two decisions. Aspect: менялись, imperfective, because the sentence is about the manner and course of the change rather than about a single completed result; изменились would say that they changed and stopped. Word order: putting the verb before the pronoun subject throws the emphasis onto по-разному at the end, which is where the new information belongs. Writing но они менялись по-разному is also correct and slightly flatter.
In 2012 the territory of Moscow was enlarged more than twofold
В 2012 году территория Москвы была увеличена более чем вдвое. Была увеличена is a short-form past passive participle with the auxiliary — the genuine Russian passive, appropriate here because the agent is deliberately absent: this was an administrative act and naming its author would change the sentence. It agrees with территория, feminine singular. Более чем вдвое is the fixed expression for more than twofold; в два раза больше is the alternative and reads slightly heavier.
and new railway lines have brought the suburbs closer to the centre
а новые железнодорожные линии приблизили пригороды к центру. А rather than но: the clause adds a parallel fact rather than contradicting one, and choosing between а, но and и correctly is worth doing consciously. Приблизить что-либо к чему-либо takes the accusative and then к plus the dative. Приблизили is perfective, because the sentence reports an achieved result — the suburbs are now closer.
Saint Petersburg, whose historic centre is protected by UNESCO
Санкт-Петербург, исторический центр которого охраняется ЮНЕСКО. This is the sentence's most valuable structure. English whose becomes Russian который in the genitive, placed AFTER the noun it possesses: исторический центр которого, literally the historic centre of which. Which case который takes is decided by its own clause, and the order — possessed noun first, которого second — is fixed. Охраняется is a reflexive verb doing passive duty with the agent in the instrumental, and ЮНЕСКО is indeclinable, so its form is the same in every case.
argues about something quite different: what may be built, and where
спорит совсем о другом: что и где можно строить. Спорить о takes the prepositional; о другом is the prepositional of другое used as a noun. Совсем intensifies. Можно строить is the impersonal modal with an imperfective infinitive — what it is permitted to build — where можно построить would ask about a single completed act. Note that Russian is happy to leave что и где at the front of the clause; there is no need for a dummy subject.

Result: Москву и Санкт-Петербург часто сравнивают, но менялись они по-разному. В 2012 году территория Москвы была увеличена более чем вдвое, а новые железнодорожные линии приблизили пригороды к центру. Санкт-Петербург, исторический центр которого охраняется ЮНЕСКО, спорит совсем о другом: что и где можно строить.

Typical mistakes

Writing about Russian cities in general. The theme names two cities and expects one of them in detail.
Saying Питер in a written essay. Питер is the affectionate colloquial name for Saint Petersburg; in writing use Санкт-Петербург, and Петербург in slightly less formal prose.
Confusing район and округ. A район is a district; Moscow's larger административные округа contain many of them.
Writing в окраине. Russian says на окраине with the prepositional, and на окраину with the accusative for direction.

Active revision

Выберите один город — Москву или Санкт-Петербург — и напишите по-русски 140 слов о том, как он изменился за последние пятнадцать лет. Назовите не менее трёх конкретных фактов с датами, один спор, который город ведёт сам с собой, и объясните, почему вы выбрали именно этот город.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Russian (9RU0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

Изменение населения: the city, the suburbs and the daily journey between them#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9RU0 Тема 3 - Изменение населения: жизнь в городе; жизнь в пригородахDfE GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

The demographic fact underneath this sub-theme is concentration. Russia's population is not evenly distributed and has become less so: internal migration runs steadily from small towns towards regional capitals and from regional capitals towards Moscow and Saint Petersburg, which between them hold a share of the country's population, jobs and investment far out of proportion to their area. Describe it comparatively and never with an invented number: доля населения, живущего в двух крупнейших городах и вокруг них, продолжает расти. The Russian for the process is внутренняя миграция, for the result агломерация, and for the pull that drives it высокие зарплаты и возможности. The counter-current is real too and worth naming: дачная миграция, the seasonal move out of the city, and a smaller but visible movement of people who work remotely and have left the city for good.

Life in the city and life in the suburbs are not two separate stories but one, joined by the journey between them. The Russian suburb is not usually a house with a garden; it is a спальный район, a dormitory district of tall blocks, either inside the city boundary or just outside it in Подмосковье or Ленинградская область. Кудрово and Мурино next to Saint Petersburg are the extreme case, dense enough to have become a national byword for the type, and the colloquial человейник, from человек and муравейник, is the word people use for such a building. The journey is маятниковая миграция, literally pendulum migration, and it is what the МЦК, opened in 2016, and the МЦД, whose first lines opened in 2019, were built to carry: не столько новые линии метро, сколько попытка превратить пригородные электрички в городской транспорт.

Housing policy is where this sub-theme becomes political, and the Moscow программа реновации, launched in 2017, is the case to know. Its object is the хрущёвки, the five-storey walk-up blocks built quickly in the late 1950s and 1960s to end communal-flat living, now at the end of their design lives. The programme rehouses their residents in new buildings, and it has been argued over ever since. Supporters point to the physical condition of the old stock and to flats with lifts and larger kitchens; opponents raise the loss of low-rise neighbourhoods and courtyards, increased density, and the question of whether residents were genuinely able to refuse. Report it that way — сторонники указывают на … , противники возражают, что … — because the AO4 grid rewards the weighing, not the verdict.

For the exam, build the sub-theme around one journey and one building, because a concrete pair beats any amount of general description. Человек живёт в Мурине, каждое утро едет на электричке до города, а вечером возвращается — и так почти два часа в день. Then generalise from it: город, в котором люди спят в одном месте, а живут в другом, неизбежно спорит о транспорте больше, чем о жилье. Note едет, the unidirectional verb for a journey with a destination, against ездит for the habit; note до города with the genitive for as far as; and note the который clause with a preposition, в котором, which is the structure that lets you generalise elegantly from a case.

Worked example

From a bare fact to a paragraph of argued Russian

You have one fact: a great many people who work in Moscow or Saint Petersburg do not live in the city itself. Build it into a paragraph that explains rather than describes.

State the fact through a person, not a statistic
Значительная часть тех, кто работает в Москве, живёт за её пределами. Значительная часть takes the genitive, тех, and кто takes a singular verb. За пределами plus the genitive is outside. Beginning with a proportion rather than a number keeps you safe and keeps the sentence precise; её refers back to Москвы and must be feminine.
Name the mechanism, with a dated example
Причина проста: жильё в центре стоит дорого, а транспорт стал быстрее — МЦК с 2016 года и МЦД с 2019-го сократили дорогу до города. Стоить дорого is the fixed collocation. Стал быстрее is стать plus a comparative. С 2016 года takes the genitive; 2019-го is the standard written abbreviation of the ordinal in the genitive, and using it correctly is a small mark of literacy. Сократить дорогу is to shorten the journey.
Give the human cost as a consequence, not a complaint
Плата за это — время: два часа в день в дороге складываются в месяц жизни в год. Плата за что-либо takes за plus the accusative. Складываться в plus the accusative is to add up to. This sentence turns an abstraction into an arithmetic image without inventing any statistic, since it follows from the two hours already stated.
Introduce the policy argument with both sides attributed
Город отвечает на это по-разному: сторонники плотной застройки говорят, что она делает транспорт рентабельным, а их противники возражают, что она перегружает дворы и школы. Отвечать на takes the accusative. Делать что-либо каким-либо takes an instrumental complement: делает транспорт рентабельным. Сторонники and противники with говорят and возражают is the attribution pair to reuse everywhere in this topic.
Generalise from the case with a который clause
Город, в котором люди спят в одном месте, а живут в другом, неизбежно спорит о транспорте больше, чем о жилье. В котором is который in the prepositional after в, agreeing with город. The two clauses joined by а are deliberately parallel — спят … живут — and the contrast between sleeping and living is the point. Ending on a comparative with чем gives the paragraph a conclusion rather than a stop.

Result: Значительная часть тех, кто работает в Москве, живёт за её пределами. Причина проста: жильё в центре стоит дорого, а транспорт стал быстрее — МЦК с 2016 года и МЦД с 2019-го сократили дорогу до города. Плата за это — время: два часа в день в дороге складываются в месяц жизни в год. Город отвечает на это по-разному: сторонники плотной застройки говорят, что она делает транспорт рентабельным, а их противники возражают, что она перегружает дворы и школы. Город, в котором люди спят в одном месте, а живут в другом, неизбежно спорит о транспорте больше, чем о жилье.

Typical mistakes

Translating suburb as деревня or as пригородный дом. The Russian suburb of these cities is a спальный район or a пригород of tall blocks.
Using человейник in writing. It is expressive colloquial Russian; in an essay write многоэтажный жилой комплекс or плотная застройка.
Writing ехать на электричке до города with the accusative. До takes the genitive: до города, до станции, до центра.
Presenting реновация as either simply good or simply bad. The whole point of the case is that it is contested, and the grid rewards the weighing.

Active revision

Напишите по-русски 150 слов о том, как связаны жизнь в городе и жизнь в пригороде на примере выбранного вами города. Опишите один конкретный маршрут, назовите одну транспортную стройку с датой, приведите обе стороны спора о реновации или о плотной застройке и закончите обобщением.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Общественные проблемы: бездомность и преступность#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9RU0 Тема 3 - Общественные проблемы: бездомность; преступностьDfE GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

Begin with register, because this sub-theme is the one where a careless word does the most damage. The neutral term is бездомный человек or бездомные; the acronym бомж, from без определённого места жительства, is a Soviet bureaucratic abbreviation that has become an insult and has no place in an examination answer except as something you name and then set aside. Around the neutral term sit ночлежка for a night shelter, приют, социальная гостиница, столовая for a soup kitchen, and волонтёр. In Saint Petersburg the best-known organisation in the field is the charity Ночлежка, founded in 1990, which runs shelters and a well-known rehabilitation and reintegration programme; naming a real organisation is worth more than any amount of general sympathy.

The structural cause is what raises the answer, and in Russia it has a specific and nameable form: registration. Регистрация по месту жительства — the successor to the Soviet прописка — ties a great deal of ordinary life to a documented address: access to some services, some employment, and the paperwork that other paperwork depends on. Losing an address therefore starts a chain, and the chain is the argument: без жилья теряется регистрация, без регистрации труднее найти работу, а без работы невозможно снять жильё. Say it as a circle in Russian and you have explained the phenomenon instead of describing it, which is the same move that the topic on work made about young graduates, and it is the move the AO4 grid rewards most reliably.

Crime has changed in kind rather than simply in level, and describing the change accurately is far better than reciting adjectives. The vocabulary first: преступность for crime as a phenomenon, преступление for an individual offence, кража for theft, ограбление for a robbery, мошенничество for fraud, полиция, участковый for the local officer, суд, наказание. What is genuinely characteristic of the last decade is the shift towards fraud committed at a distance — телефонное и интернет-мошенничество is discussed constantly in Russian media and in ordinary conversation, and it is a crime type that a British student will recognise while still being able to describe the Russian specifics. The other characteristic development is surveillance: Moscow has built one of the largest urban camera networks in the world, with facial recognition, and it is defended as a crime-reduction measure and criticised on privacy grounds. Report both.

The discipline for the whole sub-theme is precision of term, and it is worth stating as a rule: choose the exact word and the caricature becomes impossible. Бездомный, not бомж. Преступность, the phenomenon, not криминал, which carries a tabloid colouring. Приезжий, someone recently arrived, not a word that assigns blame. Окраина, the outskirts, not гетто, which is a claim rather than a description and is almost never accurate. And when you need to characterise a level, do it comparatively and with attribution: по официальным данным, уровень зарегистрированной преступности снижается, при этом эксперты отмечают, что часть преступлений просто перешла в интернет. That sentence attributes twice, uses a comparative, and does not commit you to anything you cannot support.

Worked example

Paper 3 Task 1: a spoken answer built from a stimulus statement

The stimulus card for the sub-theme Общественные проблемы carries this statement: «Бездомность — это личный выбор человека, а не проблема города.» Build the answer.

Announce the choice, then separate the two halves of the claim
Я выбрал утверждение Б. В этом утверждении на самом деле два разных тезиса: что бездомность — результат личного выбора и что город за неё не отвечает. Отвечать за takes за plus the accusative. Splitting a compound statement into its parts is the highest-value opening move on a stimulus card, because it lets you agree with one half and reject the other, which is exactly what the grid means by a nuanced response.
Concede the part that is real, precisely
Личные обстоятельства действительно имеют значение: потеря работы, болезнь, зависимость, разрыв с семьёй. Иметь значение is the fixed collocation for to matter. The list of four nouns is concrete rather than moralising. Conceding in specific terms — and in the nominative, as a list of circumstances rather than of failings — makes the refusal that follows credible.
Introduce the structural mechanism as a chain
Но дальше начинается механизм, который от человека уже не зависит. Без жилья теряется регистрация, без регистрации труднее найти работу, а без работы невозможно снять жильё — круг замыкается. Зависеть от takes the genitive. Теряется is a reflexive passive. Труднее and невозможно are impersonal predicates with infinitives. Three parallel без-clauses make the circle audible, and the dash plus круг замыкается names it.
Give a real organisation and what it actually does
Именно поэтому этим занимаются не только государственные службы: в Петербурге, например, с 1990 года работает благотворительная организация «Ночлежка», у которой есть и приют, и программа возвращения людей к обычной жизни. Заниматься takes the instrumental, этим. У которой есть is the have-construction inside a relative clause. Naming a real organisation with a date converts sympathy into knowledge.
Conclude on the distinction, and hand back
Поэтому я бы сказал так: причины могут быть личными, а последствия — всегда общие, и решать их приходится городу. А как вы думаете, где здесь проходит граница ответственности? Приходится plus a dative and an infinitive is the impersonal of obligation — the city has no choice but to deal with them. The closing question is required by the Interaction grid and, placed here, it invites precisely the discussion the examiner wants to have.

Result: Я выбрал утверждение Б. В этом утверждении на самом деле два разных тезиса: что бездомность — результат личного выбора и что город за неё не отвечает. Личные обстоятельства действительно имеют значение: потеря работы, болезнь, зависимость, разрыв с семьёй. Но дальше начинается механизм, который от человека уже не зависит: без жилья теряется регистрация, без регистрации труднее найти работу, а без работы невозможно снять жильё — круг замыкается. Именно поэтому этим занимаются не только государственные службы: в Петербурге с 1990 года работает благотворительная организация «Ночлежка», у которой есть и приют, и программа возвращения людей к обычной жизни. Поэтому я бы сказал так: причины могут быть личными, а последствия — всегда общие, и решать их приходится городу. А как вы думаете, где здесь проходит граница ответственности?

Typical mistakes

Using бомж in an essay or a speaking test. It is an insult in current usage.
Writing преступность is high without attribution or comparison; levels of recorded crime are contested data and must be reported, not asserted.
Confusing преступление and преступность. One offence is a преступление; crime as a social phenomenon is преступность.
Saying бездомный человек живёт на улице as the whole explanation. The registration mechanism is what makes the Russian case specific.

Active revision

Подготовьте по-русски устный ответ примерно на две минуты о бездомности в выбранном вами городе. Объясните механизм через регистрацию, назовите одну реальную организацию, приведите один аргумент тех, кто считает проблему личной, и один контраргумент, и закончите вопросом к собеседнику.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Окружающая среда: реконструкция, благоустройство и загрязнение#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9RU0 Тема 3 - Окружающая среда: реконструкция и благоустройство города; загрязнениеDfE GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

Two Russian words need separating before anything else, because the specification uses both and they mean different things. Реконструкция is rebuilding: changing the fabric, the structure, the road layout. Благоустройство is amenity improvement: pavements, lighting, benches, planting, playgrounds, the quality of the space between the buildings. A city can do a great deal of the second while doing very little of the first, and much of the argument about the Russian city over the last decade is precisely about whether благоустройство was a substitute for deeper investment. Moscow's programme Моя улица, run from 2015 to 2018, widened pavements, buried overhead cables and replanted street trees across the centre, and Парк Зарядье opened beside the Kremlin in 2017 on the site of a demolished hotel. Both are dated, both are physical, both are contested.

The contest is the interesting part and can be reported fairly in two clauses. Supporters say that a city which is pleasant to walk in is a city people use, that public space had been neglected for decades, and that the change is visible to anyone. Critics say that improvement concentrated overwhelmingly in the centre while outlying districts saw little, that the cost was high and the procurement opaque, and that the works were repeated often enough to become a standing joke — the paving slabs, плитка, being the shorthand. In Russian: сторонники говорят, что городом наконец занялись всерьёз; противники возражают, что благоустройство коснулось прежде всего центра, тогда как на окраинах мало что изменилось. That pair is worth memorising as a unit, because it works for almost any urban-policy question.

Pollution divides into three strands and each has its own vocabulary. Air: выхлопные газы from traffic, пробки, смог, and the specific Russian problem of выбросы from heating plants in winter. Waste: this is where a genuinely national policy exists, the мусорная реформа that began on 1 January 2019 and moved household waste to regional operators, with раздельный сбор мусора, separate collection, spreading unevenly since; the свалка, the landfill, and the protests that landfill sites near residential areas have generated are a real feature of recent Russian civic life. Water and green space: реки и каналы, набережные, парки, зелёные зоны, точечная застройка for infill building on green space, which is one of the most common causes of local protest in both cities.

For the exam, the most valuable single sentence in this sub-theme is the one that names what the argument is really about. Спор о благоустройстве — это, по сути, не спор о плитке, а спор о том, кому принадлежит город и кто решает. Принадлежать takes the dative. По сути is in essence and is a discourse marker worth having. That sentence lets you take any concrete detail — a park, a pavement, a landfill, a tower — and lift it to the level of analysis in one move, which is exactly what the AO4 grid means by evaluating issues and cultural contexts rather than describing them.

Worked example

Paper 1 Section C: translation into English, worked sentence by sentence

Translate into English. За последние десять лет центр Москвы изменился до неузнаваемости: тротуары расширили, провода убрали под землю, а на месте бывшей промышленной зоны появился парк. Не все встретили эти перемены с восторгом. Одни говорят, что городом наконец занялись всерьёз; другие возражают, что благоустройство коснулось прежде всего центра, тогда как на окраинах мало что изменилось. Спор этот, по сути, не о плитке, а о том, кому принадлежит город.

За последние десять лет центр Москвы изменился до неузнаваемости
За plus the accusative for the period over which. Изменился до неузнаваемости is a fixed idiom: changed beyond recognition, or beyond all recognition. Неузнаваемости is the genitive after до. Do not translate it literally as to unrecognisability; the English idiom exists and using it is what the translation is testing.
тротуары расширили, провода убрали под землю
Two third-person-plural impersonals with no subject. English cannot leave the agent out in the same way, so the natural rendering is a passive: the pavements were widened, the overhead wires were put underground. Under earns под plus the accusative because it expresses motion to a position. Провода is the plural of провод, a cable or wire — not проводы, which means a send-off.
а на месте бывшей промышленной зоны появился парк
На месте plus the genitive is on the site of. Бывшей agrees with зоны in the genitive. The subject парк comes last because it is the new information, and English will usually reproduce that with an existential: a park appeared on the site of a former industrial zone. А here joins a third parallel fact and is best rendered by and.
Не все встретили эти перемены с восторгом
Не все is not everyone — the negation attaches to все, not to the verb, and moving it would change the meaning to nobody. Встретить перемены с восторгом is to greet the changes with enthusiasm. Встретили is perfective: a single reaction at the time, not a continuing attitude.
Одни говорят, что городом наконец занялись всерьёз; другие возражают, что …
Одни … другие … is the standard Russian for some … others … and is the attribution pair this whole theme runs on. Заняться takes the instrumental, городом, and the verb is again a subjectless third-person plural: the city has finally been taken seriously in hand. Возражать, to object, is stronger and more precise than говорить, and English should keep the difference. Коснуться takes the genitive: коснулось центра, affected the centre.
тогда как на окраинах мало что изменилось … Спор этот, по сути, не о плитке, а о том, кому принадлежит город
Тогда как is whereas. Мало что изменилось is an idiom: little has changed. In the last sentence the demonstrative follows its noun — спор этот rather than этот спор — which in Russian gives a slightly summing-up, conclusive tone that English achieves with in essence this argument. По сути is in essence. Не о … , а о том, что … is the reject-and-replace frame, and кому принадлежит город puts the possessor in the dative after принадлежать: who the city belongs to.

Result: Over the last ten years the centre of Moscow has changed beyond recognition: the pavements were widened, the overhead wires were put underground, and a park appeared on the site of a former industrial zone. Not everyone greeted these changes with enthusiasm. Some say that the city has finally been taken seriously in hand; others object that the improvements affected the centre above all, whereas on the outskirts little has changed. In essence this argument is not about paving slabs but about who the city belongs to.

Typical mistakes

Using реконструкция and благоустройство as synonyms; one is rebuilding, the other is amenity improvement.
Writing загрязнение окружающую среду. Загрязнение takes the genitive: загрязнение окружающей среды, загрязнение воздуха.
Saying экология when you mean the state of the environment. Экология is strictly the science; the everyday Russian usage exists but состояние окружающей среды is the precise phrase.
Treating protest against a landfill or an infill development as unusual. Local environmental protest is a routine feature of Russian city life and saying so is accurate.

Active revision

Напишите по-русски 150 слов о благоустройстве в выбранном вами городе. Разделите реконструкцию и благоустройство, приведите один датированный проект, изложите обе стороны спора и закончите предложением, которое объясняет, о чём этот спор на самом деле.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Exam technique: writing about a real city without caricature#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9RU0 Paper 3 Task 1 - knowledge and understanding of society and culture (AO4)Pearson Edexcel 9RU0 Paper 2 - critical and analytical response (AO4), 20 marks per essay

There is a specific failure mode in this theme, and it is worth naming so that you can hear yourself doing it. A candidate who knows a little about a Russian city's problems and wants to sound analytical produces a paragraph of emotive nouns — коррупция, преступность, бедность, грязь — with no mechanism, no attribution and no counterweight. It reads as a caricature, and the AO4 grid recognises it precisely: points of view presented with simplistic justification, limited interpretation, evidence that is descriptive. The examiner is not offended by criticism; they are unimpressed by criticism that could have been written without knowing the country. The remedy is not to be positive. It is to be specific, attributed and balanced.

Three habits fix it. The first is precision of term, which this topic has already drilled: бездомный not бомж, преступность not криминал, приезжий not a word that assigns blame, окраина not гетто. The second is attribution, which converts a claim into a reported claim: по официальным данным, по оценкам экспертов, сторонники … противники … , принято считать, что. The third is the counterweight, and it need only be one clause: whatever you have criticised, name the thing that complicates it. In practice a strong sentence in this theme has all three: по официальным данным уровень зарегистрированной преступности в городе снижается, при этом эксперты отмечают, что часть преступлений просто перешла в интернет.

The reverse failure exists too and is equally costly: the travel-brochure answer, in which the city is beautiful, the metro is a palace and everyone is friendly. It fails for the same structural reason — no mechanism, no attribution, no counterweight — and it fails the theme's own title, which is about изменения, changes, and therefore about tensions. If you find yourself writing a sentence that could appear in a tourist leaflet, add a but-clause: московское метро действительно красиво и работает превосходно, но именно поэтому спор о том, куда тянуть новые линии, всегда политический.

Finally, a note on evidence. This theme rewards the dated municipal fact above almost anything else, because it is checkable and specific: the territorial expansion of 2012, the ring railway of 2016, the park and the rehousing programme of 2017, the waste reform of January 2019, the through-running diameters of 2019, the tower completed in 2021. Six dates, learned as a list, will support almost any argument you need to make about either city, and each of them can be attached to both a positive and a critical reading. Prepare the pairs: for each date, one sentence for and one against. That preparation is what makes a balanced answer possible under time pressure, because balance improvised in the room usually collapses into hedging.

Worked example

Rewriting a caricature into an analytical paragraph

Here is a paragraph of the kind the AO4 grid places in its lowest band. В Москве много преступности и бомжей. Город грязный, везде пробки. Власти строят только в центре, а окраины никого не интересуют. Это очень плохо. Rewrite it, fixing one fault at a time.

Fault one — the terms
Бомжей becomes бездомных; преступности stays but must acquire a qualifier, because преступность as a bare noun with много is not a claim about anything measurable. Грязный, applied to a whole city, is an impression rather than an observation and should be replaced with the specific thing meant — загрязнение воздуха, свалки, состояние дворов. Fixing the words alone raises the register of the paragraph before a single argument has been added.
Fault two — the missing attribution
По официальным данным, уровень зарегистрированной преступности снижается, при этом эксперты отмечают, что часть преступлений перешла в интернет. Now there is a claim with a source and a qualification with a source. Note зарегистрированной, a past passive participle used attributively, which is doing real work: recorded crime is not the same thing as crime, and the participle says so in one word.
Fault three — the missing mechanism
Бездомность в России связана не только с бедностью: без жилья теряется регистрация, а без регистрации труднее устроиться на работу. Связана с takes the instrumental. The chain replaces the bare noun with an explanation, and it is the same mechanism the earlier section established — reusing it here shows the examiner that the topic is held as a system rather than as a set of facts.
Fault four — the missing counterweight
Благоустройство действительно коснулось прежде всего центра, однако МЦК и МЦД, открытые в 2016 и 2019 годах, изменили именно окраины. Действительно concedes; однако turns. Открытые is a long-form past passive participle agreeing with МЦК и МЦД. The counterweight is factual, dated and specific, which is what makes it convincing rather than merely fair-minded.
Fault five — the missing judgement
Это очень плохо is not a judgement; it is a reaction. Replace it with a claim that could be disagreed with: поэтому вопрос не в том, много ли делается, а в том, для кого. Не в том … , а в том … relocates the question, and для кого leaves the sentence pointing at something. Compare the two paragraphs: the second is barely longer, contains no more facts, and would sit two bands higher.

Result: По официальным данным, уровень зарегистрированной преступности в Москве снижается, при этом эксперты отмечают, что часть преступлений просто перешла в интернет. Бездомность связана не только с бедностью: без жилья теряется регистрация, а без регистрации труднее устроиться на работу. Благоустройство действительно коснулось прежде всего центра, однако МЦК и МЦД, открытые в 2016 и 2019 годах, изменили именно окраины. Поэтому вопрос не в том, много ли делается, а в том, для кого.

Typical mistakes

Listing emotive nouns instead of describing a mechanism; the grid calls this simplistic justification and marks it accordingly.
Criticising without attribution, which turns a reportable assessment into an unsupported personal claim.
Writing a tourist-leaflet answer; it fails for the same reasons as the caricature and additionally ignores the theme's subject, which is change.
Preparing only the critical half of each fact, so that the counterweight has to be improvised and comes out as vagueness.

Active revision

Возьмите три предложения, которые вы уже написали об этом городе. Проверьте каждое по трём пунктам: точный ли термин, есть ли ссылка на источник оценки, есть ли уравновешивающая оговорка. Перепишите те, которые не проходят проверку, и отметьте, что именно изменилось.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages (Department for Education)

References & sources

Sources

Pearson Edexcel

Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Russian (9RU0) specification

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

The changing Russian city: Москва или Санкт-Петербург

5 sections~36 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Standard 1 · Advanced 4

The changing Russian city: Москва или Санкт-Петербург

Key points

Paper 2 Section A: translation into Russian, with every decision justified

Key points

From a bare fact to a paragraph of argued Russian

Key points

Paper 3 Task 1: a spoken answer built from a stimulus statement

Key points

Paper 1 Section C: translation into English, worked sentence by sentence

Key points

Rewriting a caricature into an analytical paragraph

Sources

The changing Russian city: Москва или Санкт-Петербург

Key points

Paper 2 Section A: translation into Russian, with every decision justified

Key points

From a bare fact to a paragraph of argued Russian

Key points

Paper 3 Task 1: a spoken answer built from a stimulus statement

Key points

Paper 1 Section C: translation into English, worked sentence by sentence

Key points

Rewriting a caricature into an analytical paragraph

Sources