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).


Encyclopedia of Ukraine