Drohobych

Administrative status

As the administrative center of the Drohobych Raion (district), Drohobych itself is a city of oblast significance, subordinate directly to the oblast authorities, rather than to the raion administration located in the city itself.

History

While there are only legendary accounts of it, Drohobych probably existed in the Kievan Rus' period. According to one legend there was a settlement, called Bych, of salt-traders. When Bych was destroyed in the Cumanian raid, the survivors rebuilt the settlement at a nearby location under its current name which means a Second Bych. In the time of Kievan Rus', the Tustan fortress was built near Drohobych. However, scholars view this legend with skepticism, pointing out that Drohobych is a Polish pronunciation of Dorogobuzh, a common East Slavic toponym applied to three different towns in Kievan Rus'.

The city was first mentioned in 1387 in the municipal records of Lviv in connection with a certain Martin (or Marcin) of Drohobych. Furthermore, the same chronicler's List of all Ruthenian cities, the further and the near ones in Voskresensky Chronicle (dated 1377–82) mentions "Другабець" (Druhabets') among other cities in Volhynia that existed at the same time such as Холмъ (Kholm), Лвовъ Великій (Lviv the Great)

In 1392 Jogaila ordered the construction of the first Roman Catholic municipal parish church (Kosciół farny), using the foundations of older Ruthenian buildings. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the city was the center of large rural starostvo (county of the Ruthenian Voivodeship).

Drohobych received Magdeburg rights some time in the 15th century (sources differ as to the exact year, some giving 1422 or 1460, or 1496 but in 1506 the rights were confirmed by King Alexander the Jagiellonian). The salt industry was significant in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.

From the early seventeenth century, a Ukrainian Catholic brotherhood existed in the city, In 1648, during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, the Cossacks stormed the city and its cathedral. Most of the local Poles, as well as the Greek Catholics and the Jews, were murdered at the time, while some managed to survive in the Bell tower not taken in the raid. The 1772 partition of Poland gave the city to Austria. Significant oil resources were discovered in the area, making the city became an important center of the oil and natural gas industries.

After World War I, the area became part of the short-lived independent West Ukrainian People's Republic(Zakhidnoukrayins’ka Narodna Respublyka; ZUNR). The ZUNR was taken over by the Second Polish Republic and Drohobych became part of the Lwow Voivodeship in 1919. In 1928 the still extant Ukrainian private gymnasium (academically oriented secondary school) opened in the center of the city. The population reached some 40,000 in the late 1920s, and its oil refinery at Polmin became one of the biggest in Europe, employing 800 people. Numerous visitors came there to view the wooden Greek Catholic churches, among them the Church of St. Yur, which was regarded the most beautiful such construction in the Second Polish Republic, with frescoes from 1691. Drohobych was also a major sports center (see: Junak Drohobycz).

In September 1939, the city was attached to Soviet Ukraine when the territory of the interwar Poland was divided between the Nazi Germany and the USSR. In Soviet Ukraine, Drohobych became a center of the Drohobych Oblast (region). Its local Polish boy scouts created the White Couriers organization, which in late 1939 and early 1940 smuggled hundreds of people from Soviet Union to Hungary, across the Soviet-Hungarian border in the Carpathians. In early July, 1941, during the first weeks of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, the city was occupied by the Nazi Germany. As Drohobych had a significant Jewish population, the city became the site of a large ghetto (Drohobych ghetto) which the Nazis liquidated in June 1943. The German occupation ended on 6 August 1944, but it was immediately reoccupied by the Soviets. Despite the large Jewish population prior to the war, a current resident stated that he was one of only two Jews who came back to his village to live after the war. After the war, the city remained an oblast center until the Drohobych Oblast was incorporated into the Lviv Oblast in 1959. In Soviet times, Drohobych became an important industrial center in Western Ukraine with highly developed oil-refining industry, machine building, woodworking industry, light industry, and food industry.

Demographics

The population of Drohobych over the years was:

In the mid-eighteenth century, the town had a population of 2,200 (58.8%) Jews, 1,274 (34%) Roman Catholics, and 263 (7%) Greek Catholics.

In 1869, 28.7% of the town's 16,880 inhabitants were Ukrainian, 23.2% Polish or other Roman Catholic, and 47.7% Jewish; in 1939, when the population was 34,600, the respective figures being 26.3%, 33.2%, and 39.9%. By 1959, Ukrainians constituted 70% of the town's population, Russians 22%, Poles 3%, and Jews 2%.

In 1931, the total population of the Drohobych district was 194,456, distributed among various languages:

In January 2007, the total population of the metropolitan area was over 103,000 inhabitants.

Economy

Industries currently based in the city include oil-refineries, chemicals, machinery, metallurgy, and food processing.

Sights

Politics

The Arts

Other fields

Twin towns — Sister cities

Drohobych is twinned with: