Brody

Brody. Map: III-6. City (2001 pop 23,239) at the foot of the Podolian Upland in the valley of the upper Styr River; a raion center in Lviv oblast. Brody is first mentioned in historical sources in the 12th century. In 1584 the town was granted Magdeburg law, and in the 17th century a well-fortified castle was built there, designed by the French military engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan. From the mid-19th century to 1939 Brody was a county town. Because of its border location and trade privileges it was a center of Austrian-Russian trade in the first half of the 19th century. With the building of the railroads Brody lost its privileged position and began to decline: it had 20,000 inhabitants in 1880 and only 12,500 in 1931. Most of its inhabitants were Jews; in 1900 they constituted 64 percent of the population. The city has a clothes factory, a furniture factory, a concrete-making plant, a food industry, and teachers’ school. The ruins of the castle have been preserved. On 17–22 July 1944 the Ukrainian Division Galizien fought the Soviet Army nearby (see Battle of Brody).