Ostroh

Ostroh or Ostrih. Map: III-7. A city (2017 pop 15,674) at the junction of the Viliia River and the Horyn River and a raion center in Rivne oblast. It is first mentioned in the Hypatian Chronicle under the year 1100. In the second half of the 14th century it came under Lithuanian rule. From 1386 Ostroh belonged to the Ostrozky family, who built a castle and the Church of the Epiphany and established Ostroh as an important cultural, religious, and economic center. In 1528 it was granted the rights of Magdeburg law. Until 1630 the town was a leading center of Ukrainian Orthodoxy: in the 1570s the Ostroh Academy and a printing press (see Ostroh Press) were set up, and in 1581 an improved translation of the Bible was published there (see Ostroh Bible). As the Roman Catholic movement and the state's policy of Polonization increased in strength, Ostroh lost its cultural and religious role. It was captured by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1648, and the castle and church were destroyed in the process. In the second half of the 17th century Ostroh became the property of the Zasławski family, the Wiśniowiecki family (in 1673), and finally the Sanguszko family (in 1700). In 1793, with the partition of Poland, it was transferred to Russia, and became a county center in Volhynia gubernia. Today the town has a dairy, a sugar refinery, a cannery, a brewery, an asphalt and brick factory, and a railway-track repair plant. Its architectural monuments include the remains of the castle (14th–16th century), the 15th-century Church of the Epiphany (rebuilt in the 16th and restored in the 19th century), a 17th-century synagogue, and a 19th-century academy complex. In 1994, the Ostroh Academy was reestablished as the Ostroh Higher Collegium, a branch of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In 2000 it was reorganized into an independent institution of higher learning, granted the national university status, and renamed the National University of Ostroh Academy.

[This article was updated in 2020.]