Expulsion of the community, the city being removed from the residence zone

Yalta was removed from the Pale of Settlement, and its community ordered to leave. The city had become a resort town where the court and high society came in winter, and Jewish presence was deemed incompatible with this new purpose. A few merchants of the first guild were exempted, as were patients holding a medical certificate, which gave rise to the usual trade in attestations that accompanies such cases. The families expelled from Yalta retreated to Sevastopol and to the towns of Crimea that remained open. The episode is small in scale and instructive: it shows that by the end of the century the Pale of Settlement was no longer being reduced by sweeping laws, but city by city, according to local interests.