Tarnopol Voivodeship

Tarnopol Voivodeship Województwo tarnopolskie
Voivodeship of Poland
← 1920–1939 →
Coat of arms
Tarnopol Voivodeship (red) on the map of Second Polish Republic
Capital		Tarnopol
Government		Voivodeship
Voivodes
•	1921-1923	Karol Olpiński
•	1937-1939	Tomasz Malicki
Historical era		Interwar period
•	Established	23 December 1920
•	Soviet invasion	17 September 1939
Area
•	1921	16,533 km2(6,383 sq mi)
Population
•	1921	1,428,520
	Density	86.4 /km2  (223.8 /sq mi)
•	1931	1,600,406
Political subdivisions		17 powiats, 35 towns
Today part of		Ukraine

Coat of arms

Tarnopol Voivodeship (Polish: Województwo tarnopolskie) was an administrative region of interwar Poland (1918–1939) with an area of 16,500 km² and provincial capital in Tarnopol. The voivodeship was divided into 17 districts (powiaty). At the end of World War II, at the insistence of Joseph Stalin during the Tehran Conference of 1943 without official Polish representation whatsoever, the borders of Poland were redrawn by the Allies. The Polish population was forcibly resettled after the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Tarnopol Voivodeship was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union. Since 1991, most of the region is located in the Ternopil Oblast in sovereign Ukraine.

During the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in accordance with the secret protocol of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet forces allied with Nazi Germany invaded eastern Poland on September 17, 1939. As the bulk of the Polish Army was concentrated in the west fighting the Germans (see also: Polish September Campaign), the Red Army met with limited resistance and their troops quickly moved westward. Tarnopol was occupied as early as September 18, 1939 without substantial opposition from the Poles, and remained in Soviet hands till Operation Barbarossa. Monuments were destroyed, street names changed, bookshops closed, library collections stolen and transported in lorries to the Russian archives. The province was Sovietized in the atmosphere of terror. Families were deported to Siberia in cattle trains, mainly Polish Christians.

...
Wikipedia