Analysis
“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