Pryluky or Pryluka [Прилуки or Прилука]. Map: III-13. A city (2017 pop 56,270) on the Udai River and a raion center in Chernihiv oblast. It was first mentioned, as a fortress, in the Hypatian Chronicle under the year 1092. It was destroyed by the Mongols in 1239. Rebuilt by the Hlynsky princes in the 15th century, Pryluky belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and from 1569, to the Polish Commonwealth. After Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s uprising (see Cossack-Polish War) it became a regiment center of the Hetman state (1654–1781) (see Pryluky regiment) and then a county center of Chernihiv vicegerency (1781–1802) and Poltava gubernia (1802–1925). It was granted the rights of Magdeburg law in 1783. Before the industrialization drive of the 1930s Pryluky’s main occupations were farming and tobacco processing. Today the city is an industrial and communications (railway) center. Its chief industries are machine building, the chemical industry, the building-materials industry, the tobacco industry, the petroleum industry, the woodworking industry, the textile industry, and food processing. Its architectural monuments of the baroque period include the Cathedral of the Transfiguration (1705–16), the regiment treasury (1708) (both built by Colonel Hnat Galagan), Saint Nicholas's Church (1720), and the Church of the Nativity (1806–17). The historic Hustynia Trinity Monastery is located in the vicinity of Pryluky. In 1990 archeologists discovered remnants of a Cherniakhiv culture settlement (2nd to 5th centuries AD) in the city.

[This article was updated in 2019.]


Encyclopedia of Ukraine