page_title: Podolia
section_title: Russian Empire
hierarchical_section_title: Podolia / History / Russian Empire
caption_attribution_description: English: Ukraine. Podolia. Українська: Танці в корчмі біля м. Копичинець Чортківського повіту
context_page_description: Podolia or Podilia is a historic region in Eastern Europe, located in the west-central and south-western parts of Ukraine and in northeastern Moldova. The name derives from Old Slavic po, meaning "by/next to/along" and dol, "valley".
context_section_description: From 1793–1917, part of the region was the Podolia Governorate (Russian: Подольская губерния [Podol’skaja gubernija]; Ukrainian: Подільська губернія [Podil’s’ka hubernija]) in southwestern Russia bordering with Austria across the Zbruch River and with Bessarabia across the Dniester. Its area was 36,910 km² (14,251 sq mi).
  
  In the 1772 First Partition of Poland, the Austrian Habsburgs had taken control of a small part of Podolia west of the Zbruch River (sometimes also called "Southern Podolia") around Borschiv, in what is today Ternopil Oblast. At this time, Emperor Joseph II toured the area, was impressed by the fertility of the soil, and was optimistic about its future prospects. Poland disappeared as a state in a third partition in 1795 but the Polish gentry continued to maintain local control in both eastern and western Podolia over a peasant population which was primarily ethnically Ukrainian whose similarity to the other East Slavs already subject to the Habsburg Monarchy was showcased in a 1772 book by Adam F. Kollár and was used as an argument in favor of annexation by the Habsburgs. The Ternopil (Tarnopol) region of western Podolia was briefly taken by Russia in 1809 but reverted to Austrian rule in 1815. Within the Austrian Empire, western Podolia was part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria which, in 1867 with the formation of Austria-Hungary, became an ethnic Pole-administered autonomous unit under the Austrian crown. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Austrian Podolia witnessed a large scale emigration of its peasant population to western Canada.
caption: Podolians, before 1878
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image DateTime": "2013:01:18 17:13:24", "Image ExifOffset": "2142", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}