The city was mentioned in the
Galician–Volhynian Chronicle under the year of 1256 as the town of Zviahel. The original settlement was an Old Ruthenian town of
Bolokhov Land located on the right bank of
Sluch. In 1257 it was razed by
Daniel of Galicia. The next mentioning of the settlement is found in 1432 as a rebuilt one on the left bank upstream from the original site. After the
Treaty of Riga, Novohrad-Volynskyi became part of the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the
Soviet Union. In 1936, part of the Polish population was expelled by the Soviets to Kazakhstan.
World War II By the start of World War II only 6,840 Jews remained, (30% of the total population). Hundreds of Jews were murdered in mass executions perpetrated by an
Einsatzgruppen in 1941. Many survivors were imprisoned in harsh conditions in a
ghetto and murdered in November 1942, and an important part of the town was destroyed during the war.
21st century In February 2013, the Novohrad-Volynskyi city council decided to dismantle the monument to Lenin, which was installed in front of the city council building, and move it to Slavy Park with extra-budgetary funds. After that, the local communists sued, but the cases were lost in the first instance and in the Court of Appeal of the Zhytomyr Oblast. A sundial installation was installed instead of the Lenin monument. In 2015, Viktor Veselskyi was elected to the post of mayor. In connection with the Law of Ukraine on decommunization in the city, the Soviet names of streets, alleys, squares and boulevards were renamed. On 16 June 2022, the local council decided to return the historical name Zviahel to the city, and it was also proposed to change the name of the Novohrad-Volynskyi Raion (district) to Zviahel Raion. In November, the draft law was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. By the resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine dated 16 November 2022, the historical name of Zviahel was returned to the city. ==Demographics==