Wołyń Voivodeship (, ) or Wołyń Province was an administrative region of interwar Poland (1918–1939) with an area of 35,754 km2, 22 cities, and provincial capital in Łuck.
The province was divided into 11 counties (powiaty). The area comprised part of the historical region of Volhynia.
At the end of World War II, at the insistence of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union during the 1943 Tehran Conference, Poland's borders were redrawn by the Allies. The province's Polish population was forcibly resettled westward; and the province's territory was incorporated into the Soviet Union's Ukrainian SSR.
Since 1991 it has been divided between sovereign Ukraine's Rivne and Volyn Oblasts.
History After a century of foreign rule, the Second Polish Republic was reborn in the aftermath of World War I. The borders of the republic were ratified by the Treaty of Versailles signed on 28 June 1919. They were a result of several cross-national conflicts including Polish–Ukrainian War (November 1918 – July 1919) and the Greater Poland Uprising (December 1918 – February 1919).
The borders of the republic were extended to the East as the result of the Polish–Soviet War (May – October 1920), resulting from Semyon Budyonny's August 1920 military foray into former Russian Poland as far as Warsaw. The Soviets withdrew in panic during the 1920 major Polish counter-offensive. The newly re-established sovereign Poland created Wołyń Voivodeship as one of the 16 main administrative divisions of the country.
One of the biggest achievements of the regional government in Volhynia during the interwar period was the development of modern infrastructure. Around 1,000 school buildings were constructed from scratch, with considerable amount of state funds. In total, some 2,000 elementary schools opened and over a dozen high schools, employing 4,500 teachers.[p. 128] The new projects in towns and cities – which were virtually abandoned by the imperial powers – included city halls and magistrates, post offices, state police buildings, financial institutions, hospitals, and health clinics. In 1928 the Lwów railway line via Stojanów was inaugurated. The roads were being paved on a massive scale. Around 1925 telephone and telegraph lines were built, connecting post offices across the entire voivodeship area, making possible also the wider distribution of the press.
September 1939 and its aftermath On 17 September 1939, following German invasion of western Poland in accordance with the secret protocol of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland. As the bulk of Polish Army was concentrated in the west fighting Nazi Germany, the Red Army met with limited resistance and their troops quickly moved westward, invading the Voivodeship’s area with considerable ease. They met with the invading Germans along the Curzon Line and held a joint victory parade. Janusz Magnuski, Maksym Kolomijec, Czerwony Blitzkrieg. Wrzesien 1939: Sowieckie Wojska Pancerne w Polsce (The Red Blitzkrieg. September 1939: Soviet armored troops in Poland). Wydawnictwo Pelta, Warszawa 1994, , Scan of page 72 of the book.
Wołyń Voivodeship was overrun by the Wehrmacht in July 1941 during the German attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland. The draconian restrictions on Polish Jews were imposed in August 1941. The Lutsk Ghetto was set up in the capital by the German occupation authorities, and sealed from the outside in December 1941 with the provision of only starvation food rations.Dr Pawel Goldstein, Lutsk (Luck) Ghetto. Geni.com. "In the spring of 1942 a group of young Jews attempted to escape from the ghetto to the forests, but most of them were caught and murdered by the Ukrainians. A few, however, managed to join the Soviet partisans and fought the Germans as part of the Kowpak units." The Ghetto population was about 20,000 people. During a four-day period in mid August 1942 about 17,000 Jews were rounded up by Orpo and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police,Yad Vashem, testimony of Shmuel Shulman (Shmulik Shilo), . Retrieved July 21, 2015. and taken in lorries along with women and children to the Górka Połonka forest.Andrzej Mielcarek, Wieś i kolonia Hnidawa, inaczej Gnidawa, powiat Łuck ; Gromada Połonka. Interactive 1936 map included. Strony o Wołyniu Wolyn.ovh.org in Polish. Retrieved July 24, 2015. They were shot in waves into the prepared trenches.Yad Vashem, Note: village Połonka ( or its Połonka Little Hill subdivision) is misspelled in the documentary, with testimony of eyewitness Shmuel Shilo. Retrieved July 24, 2015.
In the years of 1942–1944 Volhynia was subject to genocide, conducted by paramilitary groups associated with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), in particular, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). These forces engaged in summary executions and massacres of the Polish population, along with the destruction of settlements. The razing of towns and villages would continue until August 1944. Władysław and Ewa Siemaszko estimate that around 60,000 Poles were massacred in the province. Józef Turowski; Władysław Siemaszko, Zbrodnie nacjonalistów ukraińskich dokonane na ludności polskiej na Wołyniu, 1939–1945 () Warsaw, Wydawnictwo von borowiecky Publishing, 2000. Second edition, foreword by Prof. Dr Ryszard Szawłowski. . According to historian Professor Czesław Partacz (Historian and Lecturer at the Koszalinkiej Politechnic) the true figure of massacred Poles was between 134,000 and 150,000. Profesor Czesław Partacz - Historyk, Wykładowca na Politechnice Koszalinkiej. Ukrainians who opposed the attacks on Poles were themselves targeted with similar aggression. Stanisław Bereś, Rozmowa ze Stanisławem Srokowskim: WIELKA CIEMNOŚĆ SPOWIŁA KRESY Dziennik, Warsaw, 9.01.07, reprinted in Angora Weekly, nr 4/2007, 28.01.07
Geography
The Wołyń voivodeship was located at the south-eastern corner of Poland, bordering the Soviet Union to the east, the Lublin Voivodeship to the west, the Polesie Voivodeship to the north, and the Lwów and Tarnopol Voivodeships to the south. Initially, the Voivodeship’s area in the new Poland was 30,276 square kilometres. On 16 December 1930, Sarny County, comprising 5,478 km2 of land, was transferred from Polesie Voivodeship to the Wołyń Voivodeship. As a result, the total area of the Wołyń Voivodeship increased to 35,754 km2, making it Poland's second largest province.
The landscape was flat and hilly for the most part. In the north, there was a flat strip of land called Volhynian Polesie, which extended some 200 kilometres from the Southern Bug river to the Polish-Soviet border. The landscape in the south was more hilly, especially in the extreme south-east corner around the historical town of Krzemieniec, in the Gologory mountains. The province's main rivers were the Styr, the Horyń, and the Słucz.
Administrative divisions The Wołyń Voivodeship was created formally on 19 February 1921. It was initially divided into the counties of Dubno, Horochow, Kowel, Krzemieniec, Luboml, Łuck, Ostróg, Równe and Włodzimierz Wołyński. On 1 January 1925 the gminas of Zdołbunów and Zdołbica of Równe county and gminas of Buderaż and Mizocz of Dubno one were passed to one of Ostróg. Center of Ostróg one was moved to Zdołbunów and was renamed as Zdołbunów one. Also gminas of Bereźne, Derażne, Kostopol, Ludwipol, Stepań and Stydyń were detached from county of Równe and one of Kostopol was formed. At same arrangements Majków gmina of Ostróg was passed to Równe one, Beresteczko gmina of Dubno one was passed to Horochow one, Ołyka gmina of Dubno one was passed to Łuck one, Radziwiłłów gmina of Krzemieniec was passed to Dubno one.
Counties
The capital, Łuck, had a population of around 35,600 (as of 1931). Other important centers of the Voivodeship were: Równe (in 1931 pop. 42,000), Kowel (pop. 29,100), Włodzimierz Wołyński (pop. 26,000), Krzemieniec (pop. 22,000), Dubno (pop. 15,300), Ostróg (pop. 13,400) and Zdołbunów (pop. 10,200).
List of Counties with square area and population # Name CoA Area Population 1 Kowel county 5,682 km2 255,100 2 Sarny county (since 1930) 5,478 km2 181,300 3 Łuck county 4,767 km2 290,800 4 Kostopol county 3,496 km2 159,600 5 Dubno county 3,275 km2 226,700 6 Równe county 2,898 km2 252,800 7 Krzemieniec county 2,790 km2 243,000 8 Włodzimierz Wołyński county 2,208 km2 150,400 9 Luboml county 2,054 km2 85,500 10 Horochów county 1,757 km2 122,100 11 Zdołbunów county 1,349 km2 118,300
Demographics
The capital of the Wołyń Voivodeship was Lutsk, Volhynia (now in Ukraine). It consisted of 11 powiats (counties), 22 larger towns, 103 villages and literally thousands of smaller communities and khutors (), with clusters of farms unable to offer any form of resistance against future military attacks.Ewa i Władysław Siemaszko, Wołyń w latach okupacji in Ludobójstwo dokonane przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich na ludności polskiej Wołynia 1939 - 1945, ibidem. In 1921 Wołyń Province was inhabited by 1,437,569 people, and the population density was 47.5 persons per km2. By 1931 the population had grown to 2,085,600, and the density to 58 persons per km2. According to the Polish census of 1931, the Ukrainian language was spoken by 1,418,324 inhabitants (68.0%), Polish by 346,640 (16.6%), Yiddish by 174,157 (8.3%), Hebrew by 31,388 (1.5%), German by 46,883 (2.2%), Czech by 30,977 (1.5%), Russian by 23,387 (1.1%), Ruthenian by 8,548 (0.4%), and Belarusian by 2,417 (0.1%).Census of Poland: Wołyń Voivodeship (1931). The population summary page from 1931 census. Table 10: Ludnosc - Population. Jezyk ojczysty - Mother tongue, page 22.
The primary religions practised in the area were Eastern Orthodox Christian (69.8%), Roman Catholic (15.7%) as well Judaism by the Jews (10%), Protestantism (2.6%) and the Islamic faith by the Tatars. With respect to the Orthodox Ukrainian population in eastern Poland, the Polish government initially issued a decree defending the rights of the Orthodox minorities. In practice, this often failed, as the Catholics, also eager to strengthen their position, had official representation in the Sejm and the courts.Paul R. Magocsi, A history of Ukraine, University of Toronto Press, 1996, p. 596 In Russian Poland: "Under Tsarist rule the Uniate population had been forcibly converted to Orthodoxy. In 1875, at least 375 Uniate Churches were converted into Orthodox churches. The same was true of many Latin-rite Roman Catholic churches." Orthodox churches were built as symbols of the Russian rule and associated by Poles with Russification during the Partition period With time, some 190 Orthodox churches were destroyed or disassembled (many of them already abandoned),Manus I. Midlarsky, The Impact of External Threat on States and Domestic Societie, (in) Dissolving Boundaries, Blackwell Publishers, 2003, , Google Print, p. 15. and 150 more were transformed into Roman Catholic churches. Such actions were condemned by the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, who claimed that these acts would "destroy in the souls of our non-united Orthodox brothers the very thought of any possible reunion."
The land reform designed to favour the PolesSnyder, op cit, Google Print, p. 146 in mostly Ukrainian populated Volhynia, the agricultural territory where the land question was especially severe, created alienation from the Polish state of even the Orthodox Volhynian population who tended to be much less radical than the Greek Catholic Galicians.
The results of the 1931 census (questions about mother tongue and about religion) are presented in the table below: