New Singapore Free City

Yalta Free City (Yarphese Yạl-tạ Bạ̌́ch Gêng), Ukranian (Вільне місто Ялта) is a small city currently administered by the Grand Yarphese Republic. It was administered by Ukraine until very recently. It contains the former town communities of Yalta, Gurzuf, and Massandra, all within former Yalta Municipality. Yarphei currently administers the Free City in three zones, according to the names of the former town communities.

12th-19th centuries
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 asEtalita 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 (Feodosiya). 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; one of the villages they established nearby is also called Yalta.

In the 19th century, the town became a fashionable resort for the Russian aristocracy and gentry. Leo Tolstoy spent summers there and Anton Chekhov in 1898 bought a house (the White Dacha) here, where he lived till 1902; Yalta is the setting for Chekhov's short story, The Lady with the Dog, and such prominent plays as The Three Sisters were written in Yalta. The town was also closely associated with royalty. In 1889 Tsar Alexander III finished construction of Massandra Palace a short distance to the north of Yalta andNicholas II built the Livadia Palace south-west of the town in 1911.

In the 20th century
During the 20th century Yalta was the principal holiday resort of the Soviet Union. In 1920, Lenin issued a decree "On the Use ofCrimea for the Medical Treatment of the Working People" which endorsed the region's transformation from a fairly exclusive resort area into a recreation facility for tired proletarians. Numerous workers' sanatoria were constructed in and around Yalta. 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 also came to Yalta; the Soviet dictator Stalin used the Massandra Palace as his summer residence. The NKVD shot all prisoners in city prisons on November 4, 1941.

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.

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Status as a Free City
On 1 May 2010, the city was transferred over to Yarphei in return for some shares of Yarphese Huo, and several other agreements defined by the Treaty of Pernik. Currently the Yarphese maintains full control, but there are certain limitations by the Ukrainian government i.e. Yarphei cannot prevent people from moving from Yalta to Ukraine through quotas or tariffs.