Russian Empire
The Russian Empire known as Imperial Russia or Russia, was an empire that existed across Eurasia and North America from 1721, following the end of the Great Northern War, until the Republic was proclaimed by the Provisional Government that took power after the February Revolution of 1917. The third largest empire in world history, at its greatest extent stretching over three continents, Europe and North America, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires; the rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighboring rival powers: the Golden Horde, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire. It played a major role in 1812–1814 in defeating Napoleon's ambitions to control Europe and expanded to the west and south; the House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, its matrilineal branch of patrilineal German descent the House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov ruled from 1762. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea in the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean, into Alaska and Northern California in America on the east.
With 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics and religion. There were numerous dissident elements. Economically, the empire had a predominantly agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs, Russian peasants; the economy industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways and factories. The land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that emerged, he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, laid the foundations of the Russian state. Emperor Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an huge empire into a major European power, he moved the capital from Moscow to the new model city of St. Petersburg, led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political mores with a modern, Europe-oriented, rationalist system.
Empress Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. Emperor Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861, his policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. That connection by 1914 led to Russia's entry into the First World War on the side of France, the United Kingdom, Serbia, against the German and Ottoman empires; the Russian Empire functioned as an absolute monarchy on principles of Orthodoxy and Nationality until the Revolution of 1905 and became a de jure constitutional monarchy. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917 as a result of massive failures in its participation in the First World War. Though the Empire was only proclaimed by Tsar Peter I following the Treaty of Nystad, some historians would argue that it was born either when Ivan III of Russia conquered Veliky Novgorod in 1478, or when Ivan the Terrible conquered the Khanate of Kazan in 1552. According to another point of view, the term Tsardom, used after the coronation of Ivan IV in 1547, was a contemporary Russian word for empire.
Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the 17th century, culminating in the first Russian colonization of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, the Russo-Polish War that incorporated left-bank Ukraine, the Russian conquest of Siberia. Poland was divided in the 1790 -- 1815 era, with much of the population going to Russia. Most of the 19th-century growth came from adding territory in Asia, south of Siberia. Peter I the Great played a major role in introducing Russia to the European state system. While the vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns; the class of kholops, close in status to slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation. Russian agricultural kholops were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679. Peter's first military efforts were directed against the Ottoman Turks.
His attention turned to the North. Peter still lacked a secure northern seaport, except at Archangel on the White Sea, where the harbor was frozen for nine months a year. Access to the Baltic was blocked by Sweden. Peter's ambitions for a "window to the sea" led him to make a secret alliance in 1699 with Saxony, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Denmark against Sweden, resulting in the Great Northern War; the war ended in 1721. Peter acquired four provinces situated east of the Gulf of Finland; the coveted access to the sea was now secured. There he built Russia's new capital, Saint Petersburg, to replace Moscow, which had long been Russia's cultural center. In 1722, he tur
A Dreary Story
A Dreary Story is an 1889 novella by Anton Chekhov, subtitled "From the Notebooks of an Old Man". Influenced by the death of Chekhov's brother Nikolay from tuberculosis, it has been described as one of Chekhov's most enduring works, as "a penetrating study into the mind of an elderly and dying professor of medicine". A Dreary Story was first published in No. 11 issue of Severny Vestnik. According to the autograph, concluding the manuscript, it was "written in the Luka village, Sumsk region, 1889". In a re-worked version the novella was included into a collection called Moody People into Volume 5 of Chekhov's Collected Works, published by Adolf Marks in 1899-1901. Chekhov completed the story by the end of September. Still, in his 3 September letter he informed Alexey Pleshcheyev closely associated with Severny Vestnik, that the story was ready, but in need of "polishing and some additional pondering on", he added: "Never in my life have I written anything of the kind. Such themes are new to me, I am a bit wary of my own inexperience.
In other words, I wouldn't like to come up with something stupid."In a 7 September letter he informed Anna Yevreinova about working upon his new story and the difficulties that he's had, continuously re-shaping it and re-writing the finale. After the story had been sent to the magazine, in a 24 September letter to Pleshcheyev Chekhov conceded there were fragments in it that might be seen as overdrawn, but warned against cutting superfluous bits, for they were indispensable for the understanding of the main character. "These long monologues are as necessary as a heavy gun carriage is for a cannon. They define this character, the mood he's in, his unwillingness to be true with himself," he insisted. Pleshcheyev wrote a reply. "This is the strongest thing that you've written to date. The old scientist type is brilliant and those moments when his musing seem to become those of your own, do not spoil the whole picture," he wrote, he advised Chekhov to change the title and expressed doubts about some aspects of the old man's character.
Chekhov replied: "The thing about my hero is. People close to him shed tears, make mistakes, tell lies, but all he can do is dispassionately lecture them on theatre or literature." Nikolai Stepanovich, a luminary in the world of medical science, tormented by insomnia and bouts of devastating weakness, lives in a kind of darkening haze. He tries to analyze the reasons for his rapid physical and psychological decline in the face of unspecified illness and, imminent death in the course of the next six months; the world around him feels alien, watching his beloved Liza and Katya suffering, he is unable to connect with them, being disoriented and numbed by problems of his own. Pleshcheyev in his letter predicted the novella would divide critical opinion and proved to be right. In the 3 January 1890 edition of Novoye Obozreniye Alexander Amfiteatrov called A Deary Story "undeniably the best work of Russian literature of the last year", but in his large Moskovskiye Vedomosti review Yuri Govorukha-Otrok reviewed the novella negatively and put to doubt Chekhov's reputation of an emerging great writer.
Viktor Burenin in Novoye Vremya dismissed the novella as a trivial "etude on the slow decline of an old man's mind". In Russkoye Bogatstvo critic L. Obolensky supported the story's alleged leitmotif that "life without some belief in some higher ideal or god is meaningless", but apart from that saw little of value in it. Nikolai Mikhaylovsky, who in his Russkiye Vedomosti review of the Moody People collection condemned Chekhov's perceived'aloofness' towards his characters, praised A Dreary Story for a change, as a sign of better things to come and called it "the best and the most significant thing Chekhov had written to date". Several critics saw A Dreary Story as a mere variation on Lev Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". "Strange, how such an original writer could have fallen into such a trap of imitation", wrote Aristarkhov in Russkiye Vedomosti. Yet, D. Strunin in the April 1890 issue of Russkoye Bogatstvo praised the novella as a original piece of writing if Nilkolai Stepanovich indeed looked much like "the Ivan Ilyich in the science world".
Скучная история, the original Russian text A Dreary Story, the English translation
The Seagull
The Seagull is a play by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, written in 1895 and first produced in 1896. The Seagull is considered to be the first of his four major plays, it dramatises the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Tréplev. Though the character of Trigorin is considered Chekhov's greatest male role like Chekhov's other full-length plays, The Seagull relies upon an ensemble cast of diverse developed characters. In contrast to the melodrama of mainstream 19th-century theatre, lurid actions are not shown onstage. Characters tend to speak in ways; the opening night of the first production was a famous failure. Vera Komissarzhevskaya, playing Nina, was so intimidated by the hostility of the audience that she lost her voice. Chekhov spent the last two acts behind the scenes; when supporters wrote to him that the production became a success, he assumed that they were trying to be kind.
When Konstantin Stanislavski, the seminal Russian theatre practitioner of the time, directed it in 1898 for his Moscow Art Theatre, the play was a triumph. Stanislavski's production of The Seagull became "one of the greatest events in the history of Russian theatre and one of the greatest new developments in the history of world drama". After purchasing the Melikhovo farm in 1892, Chekhov had built in the middle of a cherry orchard a lodge consisting of three rooms, one containing a bed and another a writing table. In spring, when the cherries were in blossom, it was pleasant to live in this lodge, but in winter it was so buried in the snow that pathways had to be cut to it through drifts as high as a man. Chekhov moved in and in a letter written in October 1895 wrote: I am writing a play which I shall not finish before the end of November. I am writing it not without pleasure. It's a comedy, there are four acts, landscapes, thus he acknowledged a departure from traditional dramatic action. This departure would become a critical hallmark of the Chekhovian theater.
Chekhov's statement reflects his view of the play as comedy, a viewpoint he would maintain towards all his plays. After the play's disastrous opening night his friend Aleksey Suvorin chided him as being "womanish" and accused him of being in "a funk." Chekhov vigorously denied this, stating: Why this libel? After the performance I had supper at Romanov's. On my word of honour. I went to bed, slept soundly, next day went home without uttering a sound of complaint. If I had been in a funk I should have run from editor to editor and actor to actor, should have nervously entreated them to be considerate, should nervously have inserted useless corrections and should have spent two or three weeks in Petersburg fussing over my Seagull, in excitement, in a cold perspiration, in lamentation.... I acted as coldly and reasonably as a man who has made an offer, received a refusal, has nothing left but to go. Yes, my vanity was stung, and a month later: I thought that if I had written and put on the stage a play so brimming over with monstrous defects, I had lost all instinct and that, therefore, my machinery must have gone wrong for good.
The eventual success of the play, both in the remainder of its first run and in the subsequent staging by the Moscow Art Theatre under Stanislavski, would encourage Chekhov to remain a playwright and lead to the overwhelming success of his next endeavor Uncle Vanya, indeed to the rest of his dramatic oeuvre. Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina – an actress Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplyov – Irina's son, a playwright Boris Alexeyevich Trigorin – a well-known writer Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya – the daughter of a rich landowner Pjotr Nikolayevich Sorin – Irina's brother Ilya Afanasyevich Shamrayev – a retired lieutenant and the manager of Sorin's estate Polina Andryevna – Ilya's wife Masha – Ilya and Polina's daughter Yevgeny Sergeyevich Dorn – a doctor Semyon Semyonovich Medvedenko – a teacher Yakov – a hired workman Cook – a worker on Sorin's estate Maid – a worker on Sorin's estate Watchman – a worker on Sorin's estate, he is the brother of the famous actress Irina Arkadina, who has just arrived at the estate for a brief vacation with her lover, the writer Boris Trigorin.
Pjotr Sorin and his guests gather at an outdoor stage to see an unconventional play that Irina's son, Konstantin Treplyov, has written and directed. The play-within-a-play features Nina Zarechnaya, a young woman who lives on a neighboring estate, as the "soul of the world" in a time far in the future; the play is Konstantin's latest attempt at creating a new theatrical form, is a dense symbolist work. Irina laughs at the play, finding it incomprehensible. Irina does not seem concerned about her son. Although others ridicule Konstantin's drama, the physician Yevgeny Dorn praises him. Act I sets up the play's various romantic triangles. T
Anton Chekhov bibliography
This is a partial list of Anton Chekhov's works: That Worthless Fellow Platonov —provided the source material for Michael Frayn's Wild Honey On the High Road, one-act. On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco Swansong —one-act play Ivanov —a drama in four acts The Bear or The Boor —one act comedy A Marriage Proposal —one act A Tragedian in Spite of Himself or A Reluctant Tragic Hero The Wedding —one act Tatiana Repina —one act The Wood Demon —four-act comedy The Festivities The Seagull —a comedy in four acts Uncle Vanya —based on The Wood Demon Three Sisters —a drama in four acts The Cherry Orchard —a comedy in four acts The Shooting Party The Steppe „Степь“ The Duel „Дуэль“ An Anonymous Story (Alternate translations: The Story of an Unknown Man/The Story of a Nobody] „Рассказ неизвестного человека“ Three Years „Три года“ My Life, Моя жизнь A Journey to Sakhalin, including: Sakhalin Island Across Siberia Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends: With a Biographical Sketch. Translated by Constance Garnett.
New York. 1920. Internet Archive on-line edition. Letters on the Short Story, the Drama, Other Literary Topics, by Anton Chekhov. Selected and Edited by Louis S. Friedland. London. 1924. The Letters of Anton Pavolvitch Tchekhov to Olga Leonardovna Knipper. Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. New York; the Life and Letters of Anton Tchekov. Translated and Edited by S. S. Koteliansky and Philip Tomlinson. New York. 1925. The Personal Papers of Anton Chekhov. Introduction by Matthew Josephson. New York. 1948. The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov. Edited by Lillian Hellman and translated by Sidonie Lederer. New York. 1955. ISBN 0-374-51838-6. DEAR WRITER, DEAR ACTRESS: The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper. Ecco, 1997, ISBN 0-88001-550-0. Anton Chekhov's Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. Translated by Simon Karlinsky, Michael Henry Heim, Northwestern University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8101-1460-7. A Life in Letters. Translated by Rosamund Bartlett, Anthony Phillips. Penguin Books, 2004.
ISBN 0-14-044922-1. Note-Book of Anton Chekhov. Translated by S. S. Koteliansky, Leonard Woolf, New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1921. Internet Archive on-line edition. In Russian The Undiscovered Chekhov: Fifty-One Newly Translated Stories, translated by Peter Constantine, foreword by Spalding Gray, UK edition, 2002: ISBN 0-7156-3155-1. NB: This collection seems to expand with each new edition The Unknown Chekhov: Stories and Other Writings Hitherto Unpublished, translated by Avrahm Yarmolinsky, 1954 The Works of Anton Chekhov at The University of Adelaide Library Short stories by Anton Chekhov at Gutenberg Five short stories by Chekhov adapted for the stage Bringing early Chekhov to an English-speaking readership Chekhov, Anton. Sekirin, Peter, ed. A Night in the Cemetery: And Other Stories of Crime and Suspense. New York: Pegasus. P. 320. ISBN 978-1605980591. Study resource for "The Lady with the Dog" Retrieved 17 February 2007. Teuber, Andreas. "Anton Chekhov Page". Retrieved 2008-07-14. Willis, Louis. "Chekhov's Crime Stories".
Literary and Genre. Knoxville: SleuthSayers. 55 + Stories Internet Archive Creative Commons and Public Domain The Little Trilogy Internet Archive Creative Commons and Public Domain Additional Stories from LibriVox See More Chekhov Stories
Actor
An actor is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film and television; the analogous Greek term is ὑποκριτής "one who answers". The actor's interpretation of their role—the art of acting—pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. Interpretation occurs when the actor is "playing themselves", as in some forms of experimental performance art. In ancient Greece and Rome, the medieval world, the time of William Shakespeare, only men could become actors, women's roles were played by men or boys. After the English Restoration of 1660, women began to appear on stage in England. In modern times in pantomime and some operas, women play the roles of boys or young men. After 1660 in England, when women first started to appear on stage, the terms actor or actress were used interchangeably for female performers, but influenced by the French actrice, actress became the used term for women in theater and film.
The etymology is a simple derivation from actor with -ess added. When referring to groups of performers of both sexes, actors is preferred. Actor is used before the full name of a performer as a gender-specific term. Within the profession, the re-adoption of the neutral term dates to the post-war period of the 1950 and'60s, when the contributions of women to cultural life in general were being reviewed; when The Observer and The Guardian published their new joint style guide in 2010, it stated "Use for both male and female actors. The guide's authors stated that "actress comes into the same category as authoress, manageress,'lady doctor','male nurse' and similar obsolete terms that date from a time when professions were the preserve of one sex.". "As Whoopi Goldberg put it in an interview with the paper:'An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor – I can play anything.'" The UK performers' union Equity has no policy on the use of "actor" or "actress". An Equity spokesperson said that the union does not believe that there is a consensus on the matter and stated that the "...subject divides the profession".
In 2009, the Los Angeles Times stated that "Actress" remains the common term used in major acting awards given to female recipients. With regard to the cinema of the United States, the gender-neutral term "player" was common in film in the silent film era and the early days of the Motion Picture Production Code, but in the 2000s in a film context, it is deemed archaic. However, "player" remains in use in the theatre incorporated into the name of a theatre group or company, such as the American Players, the East West Players, etc. Actors in improvisational theatre may be referred to as "players". In 2015, Forbes reported that "...just 21 of the 100 top-grossing films of 2014 featured a female lead or co-lead, while only 28.1% of characters in 100 top-grossing films were female...". "In the U. S. there is an "industry-wide in salaries of all scales. On average, white women get paid 78 cents to every dollar a white man makes, while Hispanic women earn 56 cents to a white male's dollar, Black women 64 cents and Native American women just 59 cents to that."
Forbes' analysis of US acting salaries in 2013 determined that the "...men on Forbes' list of top-paid actors for that year made 21/2 times as much money as the top-paid actresses. That means that Hollywood's best-compensated actresses made just 40 cents for every dollar that the best-compensated men made." The first recorded case of a performing actor occurred in 534 BC when the Greek performer Thespis stepped onto the stage at the Theatre Dionysus to become the first known person to speak words as a character in a play or story. Prior to Thespis' act, Grecian stories were only expressed in song, in third person narrative. In honor of Thespis, actors are called Thespians; the male actors in the theatre of ancient Greece performed in three types of drama: tragedy and the satyr play. Western theatre developed and expanded under the Romans; the theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, acrobatics, to the staging of situation comedies, to high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies.
As the Western Roman Empire fell into decay through the 4th and 5th centuries, the seat of Roman power shifted to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. Records show that mime, scenes or recitations from tragedies and comedies and other entertainments were popular. From the 5th century, Western Europe was plunged into a period of general disorder. Small nomadic bands of actors traveled around Europe throughout the period, performing wherever they could find an audience. Traditionally, actors were not of high status. Early Middle Ages actors were denounced by the Church during the Dark Ages, as they were viewed as dangerous and pagan. In many parts of Europe, traditional beliefs of the region and time period meant actors could not receive a Christian burial. In the Early Middle Ages, churches in Europe began staging dramatized versions of biblical events. By the middle of the 11th century, liturgical drama had spread from Russia to Scandinavia
Vsevolod Meyerhold
Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a Russian and Soviet theatre director and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre. During the Great Purge, Meyerhold was arrested and executed in February 1940. Vsevolod Meyerhold was born Karl Kasimir Theodor Meierhold in Penza on 28 January o.s. 1874 to Russian-German wine manufacturer Emil Fyodorovich Meierhold and his Russian-Dutch wife, Alvina Danilovna. He was the youngest of eight children. After completing school in 1895, Meierhold studied law at Moscow University but never completed his degree, he was torn between studying a career as a violinist. However, he failed his audition to become the second violinist in the University orchestra and in 1896 joined the Moscow Philharmonic Dramatic School. On his 21st birthday, he converted from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity and accepted "Vsevolod" as an Orthodox Christian name.
Meyerhold began acting in 1896 as a student of the Moscow Philharmonic Dramatic School under the guidance of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, co-founder with Konstantin Stanislavsky of the Moscow Art Theatre. At the MAT, Meyerhold played 18 roles, such as Vasiliy Shuiskiy in Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich and Ivan the Terrible in The Death of Ivan the Terrible. In 1898, in the first successful production of Chekhov's first play, The Seagull, Meyerhold played the lead male role, opposite Chekhov's future wife, Olga Knipper. After leaving the MAT in 1902, wanting to break free of the naturalistic'missing fourth wall' productions of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, Meyerhold participated in a number of theatrical projects, as both a director and actor; each project was an arena for creation of new staging methods. Meyerhold was one of the most fervent advocates of Symbolism in theatre when he worked as the chief producer of the Vera Komissarzhevskaya theatre in 1906–1907, he was invited back to the MAT around this time to pursue his experimental ideas.
Meyerhold continued theatrical innovation during the decade 1907–1917, while working with the imperial theatres in St. Petersburg, he introduced classical plays in an innovative manner, staged works of controversial contemporary authors like Fyodor Sologub, Zinaida Gippius, Alexander Blok. In these plays, Meyerhold tried to return acting to the traditions of Commedia dell'arte, rethinking them for the contemporary theatrical reality, his theoretical concepts of the "conditional theatre" were elaborated in his book On Theatre in 1913. On the day when the Russian Revolution of 1917 broke out - on 25 February, under the old style calendar used in Russia - Meyerhold's production of Masquerade by Mikhail Lermontov had a dress rehearsal at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, in front of an audience that included the poet Anna Akhmatova; that evening has been described as "the last act of the tragedy of the old regime, when the Petersburg elite went to enjoy themselves at this splendidly luxurious production in the midst of the chaos and confusion.".
Sergei Eisenstein, a teenager but would be a world-renowned film director wanted to see the production, having heard that it featured clowns, but having made his way across the city, in the throes of a revolution was disappointed to discover that the Alexandrinsky was closed. Meyerhold was one of the first prominent Russian artists to welcome the Bolshevik Revolution - and one of only five out of 120 who accepted an invitation to meet the new People's Commissar for Enlightenment, Anatoly Luncharsky in November 1917, he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1918, narrowly escaping execution when he was caught on the wrong side of the battle lines during the civil war. He became an official of the Theatre Division of the Commissariat of Enlightenment. In 1918 -- 1919, Meyerhold formed an alliance with the head of the Division. Together, they tried to radicalize Russian theatres nationalizing them under Bolshevik control. Meyerhold had to leave for the south. In his absence, the head of the Commissariat, Anatoly Lunacharsky, secured Vladimir Lenin's permission to revise government policy in favor of more traditional theatres and dismissed Kameneva in June 1919.
After returning to Moscow, Meyerhold founded his own theatre in 1920, known from 1923 as the Meyerhold Theatre until 1938. Meyerhold confronted the principles of theatrical academism, claiming that they are incapable of finding a common language with the new reality. Meyerhold's methods of scenic constructivism and circus-style effects were used in his most successful works of the time; some of these works included Nikolai Erdman's The Mandate, Mayakovsky's Mystery-Bouffe, Fernand Crommelynck's Le Cocu magnifique and Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin's Tarelkin's Death. Mayakovsky collaborated with Meyerhold several times, was said to have written The Bedbug for him; the actors participating in Meyerhold's productions acted according to the principle of biomechanics, the system of actor training, taught in a special school created by Meyerhold. Meyerhold's acting technique had fundamental principles at o
Yalta
Yalta is a resort city on the south coast of the Crimean Peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea. It serves as the administrative center of one of the regions within Crimea. Population: 76,746; the city is located on the site of an ancient Greek colony, said to have been founded by the Greek conquerors who were looking for a safe shore on which to land. It is situated on a deep bay facing south towards the Black Sea, surrounded by the mountain range Ai-Petri, it surrounded by numerous vineyards and orchards. The term "Greater Yalta" is used to designate a part of the Crimean southern coast spanning from Foros in the west to Gurzuf in the east and including the city of Yalta and multiple adjacent urban settlements; the existence of Yalta was first recorded in the 12th century by an Arab geographer, who described it as a Byzantine port and fishing settlement. It became part of a network of Genoese trading colonies on the Crimean coast in the 14th century, when it was known as Etalita or Galita. Crimea was captured by the Ottoman Empire in 1475, which made it a semi-independent subject territory under the rule of the Crimean Khanate but the southern coast with Yalta was under direct Ottoman rule forming the Eyalet of Kefe.
Yalta was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783, along with the rest of Crimea, sparking the Russo-Turkish War, 1787-1792. Prior to the annexation of the Crimea, the Crimean Greeks were moved to Mariupol in 1778. In the 19th century, the town became a fashionable resort for gentry. Leo Tolstoy spent summers there and Anton Chekhov in 1898 bought a house here, where he lived till 1902; the town was closely associated with royalty. In 1889 Tsar Alexander III finished construction of Massandra Palace a short distance to the north of Yalta and Nicholas II built the Livadia Palace south-west of the town in 1911. During the 20th century Yalta was the principal holiday resort of the Soviet Union. In 1920, Vladimir Lenin issued a decree "On the Use of Crimea for the Medical Treatment of the Working People" which endorsed the region's transformation from a exclusive resort area into a recreation facility for tired proletarians. Numerous workers' sanatoria were constructed around Yalta and the surrounding district.
There were, in fact, few other places that Soviet citizens could come for a seaside holiday, as foreign travel was forbidden to all but a handful. The Soviet elite came to Yalta. Yalta was occupied by the German Army from 9 November 1941 to 16 April 1944; the town came to worldwide attention in 1945 when the Yalta Conference between the "Big Three" powers – the Soviet Union, the United States and the United Kingdom – was held at the Livadia Palace. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Yalta has struggled economically. Many of the nouveaux riches of ex-Soviet citizens began going to other European holiday resorts, now that they had the freedom and money to travel; the town's transport links have been reduced with the end of all passenger traffic by sea. The longest trolleybus line in Europe goes from the train station in Simferopol to Yalta. Yalta is crowded in the vacation season and prices for accommodation are high. Most of the tourists are from countries of the former Soviet Union.
Yalta has a beautiful seafront promenade along the Black Sea. People can be seen strolling there all seasons of the year, it serves as a place to gather and talk, to see and be seen. There are several beaches to the west of the promenade; the town has several movie theaters, a drama theater, plenty of restaurants, several open-air markets. Two beaches in Yalta are Blue Flag beaches since May 2010, these were the first beaches to be awarded a Blue Flag in a CIS member state. Crimea was annexed by Russia in early 2014 and the peninsula, Ukrainian territory since 1991, is now administered as two Russian federal subjects - the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol; the international community has overwhelmingly condemned the Russian Federation's acts in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. United Nations General Assembly Resolutions 68/262 of 27 March 2014, 71/205 of 19 December 2016 and 72/190 of 19 December 2017 confirmed the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol as part of the territory of Ukraine, condemned the occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and reaffirmed the non-recognition of the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation.
The United Nations called upon all States, international organizations and specialized agencies not to recognize any alteration of the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol and to refrain from any action or dealing that might be interpreted as recognizing any such altered status. Famous attractions within or near Yalta are: Yalta's Sea Promenade, housing many attractions, renovated in 2003 and 2004. Saint Hripsime Church of Yalta, an Armenian Church, with frescoes by V. Surenyants A Roman Catholic Church built by Nikolay Krasnov Yalta's cable car, taking vis
