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ORIGINS.

The Ternopil Region was part of Habsburg Galicia and was an ethnic mix of mainly Roman Catholic Poles, Greek Catholic Ruthenians, and Jews. Intermarriage between Poles and Ruthenians was common.

The city of Ternopil is located on the banks of the Seret River. Until 1944, it was known mostly as Tarnopol having been founded in 1540 by Polish commander and Hetman Jan Amor Tarnowski, as a military stronghold and castle. Its Polish name “Tarnopol” means “Tarnowski’s city” and stems from a combination of the founder’s family name and the Greek term “polis”. The etymology of the Tarnowski family surname originates from the city of Tarnów in Poland.

In 1544 the Tarnopol Castle was completed and repelled the first of what would turn out to be many Tatar attacks lasting for the next 150 years. The city was later sacked for the last time by Tatars in 1694, and twice by Russians in the course of the Great Northern War in 1710 and the War of the Polish Succession in 1733.

In 1772, after the First Partition of Poland, the city came under Austrian rule. In 1809, after the War of the Fifth Coalition, the city came under Russian rule, incorporated into the newly created Ternopol krai. In 1815 the city (then with 11,000 residents) returned to Austrian rule in accordance with the Congress of Vienna.

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During World War I the city passed from German and Austrian forces to Russia several times. In 1917 the city and its castle were burnt down by fleeing Russian forces. After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the city was proclaimed as part of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic.

On 15 July 1919, the city was captured by Polish forces. In July and August 1920 the Red Army captured Tarnopol in the course of the Polish-Soviet War. The city then served as the capital of the Galician Soviet Socialist Republic. Although the Poles and their Ukrainian allies badly defeated the Russians on the battle field and the Russians had offered to cede Ukraine and Belarus, by the terms of the Riga treaty, the Soviets and Poles effectively partitioned Ukraine. For the next 19 years, the ethnically mixed Ternopol area remained in Polish control.

At the onset of World War II, the Soviet invasion of Poland began on September 17, 1939. The Red Army entered eastern Poland in furtherance of the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and contrary to the Soviet–Polish Non-Aggression Pact. Tarnopol was captured, renamed Ternopil, and incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic under Ternopil Oblast. The Soviets made it their first priority to decimate Polish intelligentsia and destroy Polish culture. Ukrainian nationalist leaders were imprisoned. Mass arrests, torture and executions of Ukrainians and Poles followed.

On 2 July 1941, the city was occupied by the Nazis who led the Jewish pogrom, and continued exterminating the population by creating the Tarnopol Ghetto. Thousands of Jews were murdered at the Belzec extermination camp. Many Ukrainians were sent to forced labour camps in Germany.

During the Soviet offensive in March and April 1944, the city was encircled. In March 1944, the city was declared a fortified place (Gates to the Reich) to be defended until the last round was fired. The stiff German resistance caused extensive use of heavy artillery by the Red Army resulting in the complete destruction of the city and killing of nearly all German occupants (55 survivors out of 4,500). Unlike many other occasions, where the Germans had practised a scorched earth policy during their withdrawal from territories of the Soviet Union, the devastation was caused directly by the hostilities with 85% of the city’s living quarters having been destroyed. Finally, Ternopil was occupied by the Red Army on 15 April 1944.

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the ethnic Polish population of Ternopil and its region was forcibly deported to postwar Poland and settled in, and near Wrocław (among other locations), as part of Stalinist ethnic cleansing in the Soviet Ukraine.

Following World War II, Poland’s borders were redrawn and Ternopil was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union. Polish population was resettled back to new Poland before the end of 1946.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991., Ternopil has become part of the independent Ukraine.