Volhynia

Coordinates: 50°44′20″N 25°19′24″E / 50.73889°N 25.32333°E / 50.73889; 25.32333
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Wołyń" and "Volinia" redirect here. For the principality, see Principality of Volhynia. For the Polish village, see Wołyń, Łódź Voivodeship. For the township of Cass County in the U.S. state of Michigan, see Volinia Township, Michigan. For the 2016 Polish war film, see Volhynia (film).
"Volyn" redirects here. For the subdivision in Ukraine, see Volyn Oblast.
Volhynia
Волинь
Historical region
Lubart's Castle in Lutsk
Kremenets
Wiśniowiecki Palace in Vyshnivets
Ostrogski Castle in Starokostiantyniv
Southwestern Belarus, Western Ukraine
PartsVolyn Oblast, Rivne Oblast, Zhytomyr Oblast, Ternopil Oblast, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Lublin Voivodeship, Brest Region
DemonymVolhynian

Volhynia (also spelled Volynia) (

southwestern Belarus, and western Ukraine. The borders of the region are not clearly defined, but the territory that still carries the name is Volyn Oblast
, in western Ukraine.

Volhynia has changed hands numerous times throughout history and been divided among competing powers. For centuries it was part of the

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the Russian annexation during the Partitions of Poland, all of Volhynia was made part of the Pale of Settlement on the southwestern border of the Russian Empire. Important cities include Zhytomyr, Rivne, Lutsk, Zviahel, and Volodymyr
.

Names and etymology

The alternative name for the region is Lodomeria after the city of Volodymyr, which was once a political capital of the medieval Volhynian Principality.

According to some historians, the region is named after a semi-legendary city of Volin or Velin, said to have been located on the

Western Bug
.

Geography

See also: Red Ruthenia and Polesia
Ostrogski
princes in the 15th century.
Olyka Castle

Geographically it occupies northern areas of the

Sluch River or just east of it. Within the territory of Volhynia is located Little Polisie, a lowland that actually divides the Volhynian-Podolian Upland into separate Volhynian Upland and northern outskirts of Podolian Upland
, the so-called Kremenets Hills. Volhynia is located in the basins of the Western Bug and Prypyat, therefore most of its rivers flow either in a northern or a western direction.

Relative to other historical regions, it is northeast of

Podlasie
.

The territories of historical Volhynia are now part of the Volyn, Rivne and parts of the Zhytomyr, Ternopil and Khmelnytskyi Oblasts of Ukraine, as well as parts of Poland (see Chełm). Major cities include Lutsk, Rivne, Kovel, Volodymyr, Kremenets (Ternopil Oblast) and Starokostiantyniv (Khmelnytskyi Oblast). Before World War II, many Jewish shtetls (small towns), such as Trochenbrod and Lozisht, were an integral part of the region.[3]: 770  At one time all of Volhynia was part of the Pale of Settlement designated by Imperial Russia on its southwesternmost border.[4]

Volhynia (French: Volhinie) in red on a map by French cartographer Henri Chatelain in 1712. White Ruthenia in white, Black Ruthenia in black, and Podolia in yellow.

History

The first records can be traced to the Ruthenian chronicles, such as the

Abraham ben Jacob that in ancient times the Walitābā and king Mājik, which some read as Walīnānā and identified with the Volhynians, were "the original, pure-blooded Saqaliba, the most highly honoured" and dominated the rest of the Slavic tribes, but due to "dissent" their "original organization was destroyed" and "the people divided into factions, each of them ruled by their own king", implying existence of a Slavic federation which perished after the attack of the Pannonian Avars.[5][6]
: 37 

Volhynia may have been included in (or was in the sphere of influence of) the Grand Duchy of Kyiv (Ruthenia) as early as the tenth century. At that time Princess

Luha River
.

As early as 983, Vladimir the Great appointed his son Vsevolod as the ruler of the Volhynian Principality. In 988, he established the city of Volodymer (Володимѣръ).

Volhynia's early history coincides with that of the duchies or principalities of

Halych-Volhynia between the 12th and the 14th centuries.

Pochaiv Lavra, the spiritual heart of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
in Volhynia.
Zymne Monastery
Great Synagogue, Lutsk
Tarakaniv Fort near Dubno

After the disintegration of the

Mennonites
, Protestants from Germany, date from 1783.

After the

Catherine II
.

In 1897, the population amounted to 2,989,482 people (41.7 per square kilometre). It consisted of 73.7 percent East Slavs (predominantly

First World War
it was still the most rural province in Western Russia.

Ukrainian People's Republic

After the

Ukrainian culture after years of Russian oppression and the denial of Ukrainian traditions. After German troops were withdrawn, the whole region was engulfed by a new wave of military actions by Poles and Russians competing for control of the territory. The Ukrainian People's Army was forced to fight on three fronts
: Bolsheviks, Poles and a Volunteer Army of Imperial Russia.

Interwar period

Map of divided Volhynia (blue) between Ukrainian and Polish (Wołyń) part, and Eastern Galicia (orange) in 1939
A card sent on the occasion of the Jewish New Year 5691 (September 1930) from Tel Aviv to Volhynia. The card shows a drawing of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and a photograph of the sender. The Hebrew inscriptions say: "A Good Happy New Year, the year of the redemption of our sanctuaries, Tel Aviv E.Y. (=Eretz Yisrael), year 5731

In 1921, after the end of the Polish–Soviet War, the treaty known as the

Volhynian Governorate between Poland and the Soviet Union. Poland took the larger part and established Volhynian Voivodeship
.

Most of eastern

West Belarus, including Volhynia. In 1931, the Vatican of the Roman Catholic Church established a Ukrainian Catholic Apostolic Exarchate of Volhynia, Polesia and Pidliashia (Wolhynien, Polissia und Pidliashia in German), where the congregation practiced the Byzantine Rite
in Ukrainian language.

From 1935 to 1938, the government of the

Poles of Eastern Volhynia (see Population transfer in the Soviet Union
).

World War II

Following the signing of the

Nazi–Soviet population transfers which followed this (temporary) German-Soviet alliance, most of the ethnic German-minority population of Volhynia were transferred to those Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany. Following the mass deportations and arrests carried out by the NKVD
, and repressive actions against Poles taken by Germany, including deportation to the Reich to forced labour camps, arrests, detention in camps and mass executions, by 1943 ethnic Poles constituted only 10–12% of the entire population of Volhynia.

During the German invasion,the Jewish population in Volhynia was approximately 460,000. About 400,000–450,000 Jews and

were massacred by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Ukraine collaborators. The Jews were shot and thousands buried in large pits. The main massacre took place between August and October 1942. It is estimated that about 1.5% survived the Holocaust. The number of Ukrainian victims of Polish retaliatory attacks until the spring of 1945 is estimated at approx. 2,000−3,000 in Volhynia.[8] In 1945, Soviet Ukraine expelled ethnic Germans from Volhynia following the end of the war, claiming that Nazi Germany had used ethnic Germans in eastern Europe as part of its Generalplan Ost. The expulsion of Germans from eastern Europe was part of broader mass population transfers after the war
.

The Soviet Union annexed Volhynia to Ukraine after the end of World War II. In 1944, the communists in Volyhnia suppressed the Ukrainian Catholic Apostolic Exarchate. Most of the remaining ethnic Polish population were

expelled to Poland in 1945. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union
in the 1990s, Volhynia has been an integral part of Ukraine.

Important relics

Famous personalities

See also

References

  1. ISBN 9785892160292
    .
  2. ISBN 9789660220744. Archived
    from the original on 2021-06-30. Retrieved 2021-09-28.
  3. ISBN 9780521362900. Archived from the original on 2021-10-03. Retrieved 2023-02-11 – via Google Books
    .
  4. ISBN 9780028660974. Archived from the original on 2021-08-11. Retrieved 2021-09-28 – via Encyclopedia.com
    .
  5. ISBN 9780140455076 – via the Internet Archive
    .
  6. OCLC 268919. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-08-27 – via MGH-Bibliothek
    .
  7. OL 7001513M – via the Internet Archive
    .
  8. ^ "The Effects of the Volhynian Massacres". Volhynia Massacre. Institute of National Remembrance. Archived from the original on 2021-05-01. Retrieved 2021-09-28.

Literature

External links

Look up Volyn in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Volhynia.
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