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Yalta Conference, 1945. "Big Three" in Livadia
After the October Revolution the Livadia palace led an unremarkable existence as a workers' sanatorium until the last year of the war placed it once again in the spotlight of international affairs.
In 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Russian Secretary-General Joseph Stalin chose the Livadia Palace as the venue for what became known as the Yalta Conference. The "Big Three" met for a week in Livadia's imposing White Hall, and Tsar Nikolai's state study became Roosevelt's bedroom.
The Yalta Declaration, issued on February 11th 1945, set the stage for the division of Germany into zones of occupation, for the possession of Eastern Poland by the USSR, and the award of German territory in the north and west to Poland in compensation. Many historians regard the Yalta conference as the place where Churchill and Roosevelt accepted the Soviet Union's future domination of eastern europe in return for Stalin's pledge to keep out of the Mediterranean, withholding support for the Italian and Greek communist parties, in spite of their loyalty to Moscow.
The Declaration also announced that a "conference of United Nations" would be held in San Francisco in April.
In the Livadia palace you can still see the table where the Big Three and their staffs sat, and the English billiard room where the crucial documents were signed. Photographs taken in the palace at the time are displayed on the walls, and in the White Hall under glass there are original copies of Pravda dated 13th February 1945 reporting the outcome of the conference.
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