Volhynia


Volhynia or Volynia is a historic region in Central and Eastern Europe, between southeastern Poland, southwestern Belarus, and northwestern Ukraine. The borders of the region are not clearly defined, but in Ukraine it is roughly equivalent to Volyn Oblast, Rivne Oblast, and the northern part of the Khmelnytskyi Oblast and Ternopil Oblast. The territory that still carries the name is Volyn Oblast.
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 Rivne, Lutsk, Zviahel, and Volodymyr.

Names and etymology

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  • or Volynė;
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  • or Wolynien ; Volhynian German: Wolhynien, Wolhinien, Wolynien or Wolinien ;
  • , or.
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 Southern Bug River, whose name may come from the Proto-Slavic root *vol/vel- 'wet'. In other versions, the city was located over to the west of Volodymyr near the mouth of the River, a tributary of the Western Bug.

Geography

Geographically it occupies northern areas of the Volhynian-Podolian Upland and western areas of Polesian Lowland along the Pripyat valley as part of the vast East European Plain, between the Western Bug in the west and upper streams of Uzh and Teteriv rivers. Before the partitions of Poland, the eastern edge stretched a little west along the right-banks 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 Pripyat, therefore most of its rivers flow either in a northern or a western direction.
Relative to other historical regions, it is northeast of Galicia, east of Lesser Poland and northwest of Podolia. The borders of the region are not clearly defined, and it is often considered to overlap a number of other regions, among which are Polesia and 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. Major cities include Lutsk, Rivne, Kovel, Volodymyr, Kremenets and Starokostiantyniv. Before World War II, many Jewish shtetls, such as Trochenbrod and Lozisht, were an integral part of the region. At one time all of Volhynia was part of the Pale of Settlement designated by Imperial Russia on its southwesternmost border.

History

The first records can be traced to the Old East Slavic chronicles, such as the Primary Chronicle, which mentions tribes of the Dulebes, Buzhans and Volhynians. The land was mentioned in the works of Al-Masudi and 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.
Volhynia may have been included in the Kievan Rus' as early as the tenth century. At that time Princess Olga sent a punitive raid against the Drevlians to avenge the death of her husband Grand Prince Igor ; she later established pogosts along the Luha River. In the opinion of the Ukrainian historian Yuriy Dyba, the chronicle phrase «и оустави по мьстѣ. погосты и дань. и по лузѣ погосты и дань и ѡброкы», the path of pogosts and tribute reflects the actual route of Olga's raid against the Drevlians further to the west, up to the Western Bug's right tributary 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. Since the late 12th century, history of the Volhynia is closely connected with that of the neighboring Principality of Galicia. These two successor states of the Kievan Rus' formed the united Galicia–Volhynia polity, on several occasions between the late 12th and the 14th centuries. They were united firstly under prince Roman the Great, but desintegrated already during the War of the Galician Succession. Upon interfering in Galician-Volhynian affairs, Hungarian king Andrew II took the title King of Galicia and Lodomeria, thus expressing his pretensions on the supreme rule over both Galicia and Lodomeria. Once included among the lands of the Hungarian Crown, those titles were used by Hungarian kings up to 1918.
After the disintegration of the Galicia–Volhynia circa 1340, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania divided the region, Poland taking western Volhynia and Lithuania taking eastern Volhynia. During this period many Poles and Jews settled in the area. The Roman and Greek Catholic churches became established in the province. In 1375, a Roman Catholic Diocese of Lodomeria was established, but it was suppressed in 1425. Many Orthodox churches joined the latter organization in order to benefit from a more attractive legal status. Records of the first agricultural colonies of Mennonites, religious refugees of Dutch, Frisian and German background, date from 1783. After 1569, Volhynia was organized as a voivodeship within the larger Lesser Poland Province of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Future Polish King Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki spent a part of childhood in Volhynia.

Late modern period

A small south-western part of the historical Volhynia was annexed by Austria in the First Partition of Poland in 1772, and included into the newly created Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, while the rest of Volhynia reamined within the Polish kingdom. In 1783, a porcelain factory was founded in Korzec by Józef Klemens Czartoryski.
After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, eastern and central parts Volhynia were annexed as the Volhynian Governorate of the Russian Empire, while the most western parts of the historical Volhynia were incorporated into the newly formed Habsburg province of West Galicia.
Russan Volhynian Governorate covered an area of 71,852.7 square kilometres. Following this annexation, the Russian government greatly changed the religious make-up of the area: it forcibly liquidated the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, transferring all of its buildings to the ownership and control of the Russian Orthodox Church. Many Roman Catholic church buildings were also given to the Russian Church. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Lutsk was suppressed by order of Empress Catherine II.
Several battles of the Polish 1863 January Uprising against Russia were fought in the region, including the Battle of Salicha.
In 1897, the population amounted to 2,989,482 people. It consisted of 73.7 percent East Slavs, 13.2 percent—400,000 Jews, 6.2 percent Poles, and 5.7 percent Germans. Most of the German settlers had immigrated from Congress Poland. A small number of Czech settlers also had migrated here. Their main regional center was Kwasiłów. Although economically the area was developing rather quickly, upon the eve of the First World War it was still the most rural province in Western Russian Empire.

World War I

During World War I, Volhynia was the place of several battles, fought by the Austrians, Germans and the Polish Legions against Russia, eg. the Battle of Kostiuchnówka.
After the 1917 February Revolution and the formation of the Russian Provisional Government, Ukrainian nationalists declared the autonomous Ukrainian People's Republic. The territory of Volhynia was split in half by a frontline just west of the city of Lutsk. Due to an invasion of the Bolsheviks, the government of Ukraine was forced to retreat to Volhynia after the sack of Kyiv. Military aid from the Central Powers as a result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk brought peace in the region and some degree of stability. Until the end of the war, the area saw a revival of 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

In 1919, Volhynia became part of the Polish-controlled Volhynian District. In 1921, after the end of the Polish–Soviet War, the treaty known as the Peace of Riga divided Volhynia between Poland and the Soviet Union, with Poland retaining the larger part, in which the Volhynian Voivodeship was established with the capital in Łuck, and the largest city being Równe.
Most of eastern Volhynian Governorate became part of the Ukrainian SSR, eventually being split into smaller districts. During that period, a number of the Marchlewszczyzna Polish national districts was formed in the Soviet-controlled part of Volhynia. In 1931, the Vatican of the Roman Catholic Church established a Ukrainian Catholic Apostolic Exarchate of Volhynia, Polesia and Pidliashia, where the congregation practiced the Byzantine Rite in Ukrainian language.
From 1935 to 1938, the government of the Soviet Union deported numerous nationals from Volhynia in a population transfer to Siberia and Central Asia, as part of the dekulakization, an effort to suppress peasant farmers in the region. These people included Poles of Eastern Volhynia.