Sokal

Sokal
Сокаль

City

Townhouses on the square in the city center

Coat of arms

Country

First mentioned

1377

Population (2013)

• Total

21,386

EET (UTC+2)

• Summer (DST)

EEST (UTC+3)

Sokal (Ukrainian: Сокаль, translit. Sokal’) is a city located on the banks of the Bug River in Lviv Oblast of western Ukraine. It serves as the administrative center of Sokal Raion (district). Population: 21,386 (2013 est.).

Until 1951 the town was located in Poland, and then transferred to the Soviet Union in the framework of 1951 Polish–Soviet territorial exchange.

First written mention of Sokal comes from 1377. In 1424, it received Magdeburg rights from prince of Mazovia Ziemowit, and in 1462, the town became part of Belz Voivodeship, Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown. On August 2, 1519, a Polish - Lithuanian army under Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski lost here a battle with Crimean Tatars, after which the town was completely burned by the invaders. Mikolaj Sep-Szarzynski later dedicated one of his poems to this battle.

The town remained in Poland until the first partition of Poland, when it was annexed by the Habsburg Empire, as part of Galicia. It was the capital of the Sokal district, one of the 78 Bezirkshauptmannschaften in Austrian Galicia province (Crown land) in 1900. After World War I, the fate of this province was disputed between Poland and Soviet Russia, until the Peace of Riga in 1921, attributing Eastern Galicia to Poland. In the Second Polish Republic, Sokal was the seat of a county in Lwow Voivodeship.