80 years ago the Yalta Conference opened in Livadia Palace

February 4 marked 80 years since the beginning of the conference of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Crimean Yalta.

Crimea was not immediately chosen as the site of the conference: doubts were raised about the safety of the place and the climate unsuitable for the ailing American president. However, Stalin still insisted on Yalta.

"It was important for the Union to show and our allies the devastation that the war had brought to the Crimea. Delegations flew to the airfield of Saki, from the city drove to their residences. They saw the devastation and how the restoration is going on", - noted the historian of the Victory Museum Alexander Mikhailov.

The Livadia Palace, restored after the German occupation, was chosen for the negotiations. Roosevelt was allocated three rooms in Livadia, the British delegation settled in the Vorontsov Palace, and the Soviet delegation - in the Yusupov Palace.

Negotiations were held at a round table in the former tsar's dining room. The most difficult issue was Polish.

"When the future Soviet-Polish border was agreed upon, Churchill insisted that the large city of Lvov be withdrawn into Poland and said that after all Lvov had never been Russian. To which Stalin replied, "But Warsaw was," said historian Nikolai Ilievsky.

In addition, the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan was discussed - it was the Yalta agreements that allowed Moscow to later regain South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. The leaders also agreed on the division of Germany into zones of influence. The most important achievement of the conference was the decision to create the United Nations Organization.

The Yalta Conference defined the post-war world order and showed that the USSR would have to be reckoned with.