of Stryi Stryi was mentioned for the first time in 1385 (see:
Red Ruthenia). Its territory was annexed to
Poland following their invasion and conquest of
Galicia. In 1387 the Polish king
Jogaila gave the city as the present to his brother
Švitrigaila. In 1431 it was given the
Magdeburg Rights, and it was located in the
Ruthenian Voivodeship, which from the conquest in the 14th century until 1772 was a part of Poland. After the partition of the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, the city became a part of the
Austrian Empire (see:
Partitions of Poland). During the revolutionary times in the Empire a Ruthenian Council was created in the city in 1848. During 1872-1875 the city was connected to the Austro-Hungarian railroad network. Its first train station was built in 1875. Around this time industrialisation began. Among the most influentual citizens of the city were Doctor
Yevhen Olesnytsky, Father
Oleksa Bobykevych, and Father
O.Nyzhankivsky. In 1886 a large fire burnt almost the entire city to the ground. From October 1914 to May 1915 Stryi was occupied by the
Russian Empire. In 1915 a
bloody World War I battle took place in the nearby
Carpathian Mountains, around the peak of
Zwinin (992 metres
above sea level), a few kilometres south of Stryi in which some 33,000 Imperial Russian soldiers perished. On 1 November 1918, an armed uprising took place in the town, after which it became a part of the short-lived
West Ukrainian People's Republic. Stryi was again annexed by Poland in May 1919 during another
invasion. In 1939, following the
Soviet Union's invasion of eastern Poland, Stryi became part of the
Ukrainian SSR. (see:
Polish September Campaign). In interbellum Poland, it was the capital of the Stryj County (area , pop. 152,600) of the
Stanisławów Voivodeship. According to the
Polish census of 1931, its population consisted of 35.6% Jews, 34.5% Poles, 28% Ukrainians and 1.6% Germans. In July 1941, the Germans invaded all Galicia, including Stryi. In a short time, Ukrainians and local Poles conducted a pogrom in the Jews of the settlement, killing about 300 people. Between then and August, 1943, the Germans, with the assistance of the Ukrainian police, are said to have murdered most of the town's 11,000 Jews in a nearby forest or rounded them up to be sent to
Belzec extermination camp. Of a pre-war population of 11,000, only a few Jews survived. During the
Cold War the town was home to
Stryy Air Base. Stryi was the first city in Ukraine to display the
Ukrainian flag, when it was hoisted at the Stryi city hall on 14 March 1990, before the December 1991 implosion of the
Soviet Union.
Recent history On 9 April 2009, the Lviv Oblast council decided to remove a
Soviet-era statue to the
Red Army soldier that was installed by the local Communist regime in the city of Stryi and move it to a museum of the Soviet totalitarianism, saying that the statue carries no historical or cultural value to the city. Until 18 July 2020, Stryi was incorporated as a
city of oblast significance and served as the administrative center of Stryi Raion even though it did not belong to the raion. In July 2020, as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Lviv Oblast to seven, the city of Stryi was merged into Stryi Raion. ==Population==