Grassmannians, flag varieties, and Gelfand-Zetlin polytopes

These are extended notes of a talk given at Maurice Auslander Distinguished Lectures and International Conference (Woods Hole, MA) in April 2013. Their aim is to give an introduction into Schubert calculus on Grassmannians and flag varieties. We discuss various aspects of Schubert calculus, such as applications to enumerative geometry, structure of the cohomology rings of Grassmannians and flag varieties, Schur and Schubert polynomials. We conclude with a survey of results of V.Kiritchenko, V.Timorin and the author on a new approach to Schubert calculus on full flag varieties via combinatorics of Gelfand-Zetlin polytopes.