Crimea VIII: Livadia

Tuesday we also stopped in at Yalta's main attraction, and for me the highlight of the trip: A visit to Livadia Palace. The place is steeped in history, and was the setting for the famous meeting between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in February of 1945. This is where the bastards more or less agreed how to redraw post-war Europe's borders and where the commieloving cunt Roosevelt in particular, gave away half of Europe to the Russians. Sweet Jeebus how I hate that man.

Still, one can feel history in the very walls here, and the second floor is mostly devoted to the Czar family as Livadia was a royal palace before the revolution. Nikolai II was as ineffective and incompetent a royal as has ever been on a throne, so no great loss there, but they didn't exactly have to go and shoot both him and his whole family just to create a republic, eh? Especially when you think about the tyrannical psychopaths that took over. Sigh. All pics from Livadia can be found here.


The views and surroundings are still stunning.


The main hall, where they had parties and negotiated.


Cunts. Fuckin cunts. The lot of 'em.


FDR's room. He stayed at Livadia during the conference, while Churchill stayed at Vorontsov.


One of the conference rooms. I noticed that they haven't gone through with complete historical authenticity, since the US flag they show has 50 stars, but Alaska & Hawaii weren't states yet in '45. Score one for the nerd.


The Czar's office on the 2nd floor.


The inbred eejit and his surprisingly lovely family. There were lots of mementos of their time at the palace, and even a hardened republican like me felt a pang of loss for the lives that could have been.


I think this was used for keeping sheets of music in. Fancy schmancy design.


Piano. I believe the empress played on occasion.


When they didn't play piano they could always listen to the grammophone.


Two eejits and a hemophiliac.