Description

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Located on the Crimean Peninsula, Yalta emerged as a popular holiday resort for Russians in the late nineteenth century being favoured by Tsar Alexander II, Tsar Alexander III and Tsar Nicholas II as well as many other members of the Romanov dynasty. The playwright Anton Chekov moved to Yalta to seek a cure and his house remains one of the major tourist attractions. From 4 to 11 February 1945, it was the venue for the Yalta Conference where Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met to discuss the postwar settlement in Europe. By that time the Red Army was already in control of large parts of Eastern Europe, with Roosevelt and a reluctant Churchill agreeing to Soviet domination of Poland and other countries. The framework for the United Nations was also agreed. Rebuilt after the war, Yalta once again emerged as a holiday resort for people from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Crimea was transferred to control of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954, and became an autonomous part of Ukraine in 1991. It was annexed by the Russian Federation in 2014. This is the first detailed historical work on the city of Yalta in English, and contains more than 300 photographs.