# Volhynia

Volhynia or Volynia (/voʊˈlɪniə/ voh-LIN-ee-ə; see below) 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 and Rivne Oblasts; 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

* Ukrainian: Волинь, romanized: Volyn, pronounced ;
* Polish: Wołyń ;
* Russian: Волынь, romanized: Volynʹ, pronounced;
* Lithuanian: Voluinė or Volynė;
* Slovak: Volyňa;
* Czech: Volyň;
* Romanian: Volhînia;
* Hungarian: Volhínia;
* German: Wolhynien or Wolynien (both ); Volhynian German: Wolhynien, Wolhinien, Wolynien or Wolinien (all);
* Yiddish: װאָהלין, romanized: Vohlin, or װאָלין, Volin.
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 20 km (12 mi) to the west of Volodymyr near the mouth of the Huczwa [pl] 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 oblsts 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.$^{:770}$ 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 Ruthenian 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.$^{:37}$
Volhynia may have been included in (or was in the sphere of influence of) the Grand Duchy of Kiev (Ruthenia) 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 (Ingvar Röreksson); 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» (and established in place pogosts and tribute along Luha), 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 (Володимѣръ).
Volhynia's early history coincides with that of the duchies or principalities of Galicia and Volhynia. These two successor states of the Kievan Rus formed Galicia–Volhynia between the 12th and the 14th centuries.
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 (1352–1366). 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 Volhynia was annexed by Austria in the First Partition of Poland in 1772.
In 1783, a porcelain factory was founded in Korzec by Józef Klemens Czartoryski.
After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, the remainder of Volhynia was annexed as the Volhynian Governorate of the Russian Empire. It 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 (41.7 per square kilometre). It consisted of 73.7 percent East Slavs (predominantly Ukrainians), 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. (The village of Kostiuchnówka is known for the Battle of Kostiuchnówka, in which the Poles defeated the Russians, (and as the place of establishment of the accomplished Legia Warsaw football club, relocated to Warsaw only in 1920.))
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 (see Population transfer in the Soviet Union).

### World War II

Following the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, and the subsequent invasion and division of Polish territories between the Reich and the USSR, the Soviet Union invaded and occupied the Polish part of Volhynia. In the course 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 100,000 Poles (men, women and children) in Volhynia 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.
The Germans operated the Stalag 346, Stalag 357 and Stalag 360 prisoner-of-war camps in Volhynia.
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

* Peresopnytsia Gospel

## Gallery

* Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral, Lutsk
* Vyshnivets Palace
* Church of the Intercession in Piddubtsi
* Ostroh Castle
* Korets Castle ruins