The river's name is very old and means "stream".[4] Its etymology stems from the Indo-European root *sreu.[note 1] The area was inhabited by theWhite Croats and it has been established that name Horvat (Croat) is likewise of Iranian (Sarmatian) origin.[citation needed]
In different times the name was written differently, and in various old documents we can find such names: Stryg, Stry, Stryj, Stryjn, Stryjia, Strig, Strigenses, Stryi, Strey, Striig, Strya, Sthryensis, Sthrya, Stryei, and Stri. The inhabitants take pride in the fact that the city has managed to keep its original name over time.[citation needed]
Stryi was mentioned for the first time in 1385 (see:Red Ruthenia). Its territory was annexed toPoland following their invasion and conquest ofGalicia. In 1387 the Polish kingJogaila gave the city as the present to his brotherŠvitrigaila. In 1431 it was given theMagdeburg Rights, and it was located in theRuthenian Voivodeship, which from the conquest in the 14th century until 1772 was a part of Poland.[5] The city was governed by the localmagistrate headed by aburgomaster. Following the Partitions of Poland the territory and all Galicia fell to theAustrian Empire.
Its geographical location had a positive influence on its development and growth. The city became a flourishing trade center being located on the major trade route betweenHalych andLviv and especially during the 15th to 16th centuries. It was destroyed during one of the Tatar raids in 1523. The city was later rebuilt and included a castle for defence purposes which later in the 18th century was dismantled by the Austrian authorities. In 1634 the city was destroyed once again by another Tatar raid. During the Khmelnytsky Uprising the Cossack Hetmanate army was reinforced by Hungarian regiments of PrinceRákóczi ofTransylvania.
In the mid-18th century, Stryi's population was as follows: 89% Roman Catholics, 6% Greek Catholics, and 5% Jews.[6] After the partition of thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, the city became a part of theAustrian Empire (see:Partitions of Poland). During the revolutionary times in the Empire a Ruthenian Council was created in the city in 1848. During 1872-1875 the city was connected to the Austro-Hungarian railroad network. Its first train station was built in 1875. Around this time industrialisation began. Among the most influentual citizens of the city were DoctorYevhen Olesnytsky, FatherOleksa Bobykevych, and FatherO.Nyzhankivsky[citation needed].
In 1886 a large fire burnt almost the entire city to the ground. From October 1914 to May 1915 Stryi was occupied by theRussian Empire. In 1915 abloody World War I battle took place in the nearbyCarpathian Mountains, around the peak ofZwinin (992 metresabove sea level), a few kilometres south of Stryi in which some 33,000 Imperial Russian soldiers perished.
On 1 November 1918, an armed uprising took place in the town, after which it became a part of the short-livedWest Ukrainian People's Republic. Stryi was again annexed by Poland in May 1919 during anotherinvasion. In 1939, following theSoviet Union's invasion of eastern Poland, Stryi became part of theUkrainian SSR. (see:Polish September Campaign). In interbellum Poland, it was the capital of the Stryj County (area 2,081 square kilometres (803 sq mi), pop. 152,600) of theStanisławów Voivodeship. According to thePolish census of 1931, its population consisted of 35.6% Jews, 34.5% Poles, 28% Ukrainians and 1.6% Germans.[7]
In July 1941, the Germans invaded all Galicia, including Stryi. In a short time, Ukrainians and local Poles conducted a pogrom in the Jews of the settlement, killing about 300 people. Between then and August, 1943, the Germans, with the assistance of the Ukrainian police, are said to have murdered most of the town's 11,000 Jews in a nearby forest or rounded them up to be sent toBelzec extermination camp.[8] Of a pre-war population of 11,000, only a few Jews survived.[9]
Stryi was the first city in Ukraine to display theUkrainian flag, when it was hoisted at the Stryi city hall on 14 March 1990, before the December 1991 implosion of theSoviet Union.[10]
On 9 April 2009, the Lviv Oblast council decided to remove aSoviet-era statue to theRed Army soldier that was installed by the local Communist regime in the city of Stryi and move it to a museum of the Soviet totalitarianism, saying that the statue carries no historical or cultural value to the city.
Until 18 July 2020, Stryi was incorporated as acity of oblast significance and served as the administrative center of Stryi Raion even though it did not belong to the raion. In July 2020, as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Lviv Oblast to seven, the city of Stryi was merged into Stryi Raion.[11][12]
^Other words with the same root are found in modern Ukrainian (струм,струя), Polish (struga,strumień), Irish Celtic (sruami)[citation needed], German (Strom, "large river"), Persian (struth, "river"), Sanskritस्रवतिsravati ("to flow"), Latvian (straume), Lithuanian (sriatas,strautas, "stream", "a thing that flows"), and other languages. The word is possibly related to theStyr, Ossetian for "big", and there is also aStyr River in Ukraine.
^Motylewicz, Jerzy (2005). "Ethnic Communities in the Towns of the Polish-Ukrainian Borderland in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries". In Hann, Christopher; Magocsi, Paul Robert (eds.).Galicia A Multicultured Land.University of Toronto Press. p. 37.ISBN9780802037817.
^This is an extremely questionable census, disregarded by western historians as grossly corrupted and falsified.
^Megargee, Geoffrey (2012).Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press. p. Volume II, 834–836.ISBN978-0-253-35599-7.
^This is disputed: see Dr. Thomas Dalton, PhD.,Debating the Holocaust - A New Look at Both Sides, Theses & Dissertations Press, New York, 2009,ISBN978-1-59148-005-1
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