Biber wrote: ↑20 Oct 2021, 02:23
Yuri wrote: ↑19 Oct 2021, 23:30
Both in Soviet and post-Soviet times I have been to Volhynia many times, including Korets.
You forgot to mention the Turkish factor. By the way, this old song ("Two brothers came from the Turkish front") reflects the complexity of the military-political situation in those areas in the Middle Ages.
That's interesting. I didn't know that. On a related topic, during the early '40s, if someone in Volhynia referred to "the Czech colonies," where would that be? Czechs were in many places but would that mean anything in particular?
Yes, there were such Czech colonies.
The most famous (at least for me) Czech colony in Volyn is the Czech Malin, located between Rovno and Lutsk, now it's Malin.
In 1940, the collective farm was created in this way.
In June 1943, the Germans shot most of the Czechs from this village, and therefore, after the war, the Czech Malin received the unofficial name "Volyn Lidice".
After the war, one of the villages in the Czech Republic was renamed Novy Malin (in the north of the Olomouc region, near town Shumperk).
I served in the 210th motorized rifle regiment, which was located in Rokitnitsa-in-Orlitsky horach, and Shumperk was a tank regiment of our 48th motorized rifle division. We very often went to the landfill in Libava and passed Novy Malin on the way.
The Volyn Czechs became the source of the formation of a separate Czechoslovak battalion (in 1941-42 it was formed together with Anders' army in Buzuluk in the Orenburg region in the Southern Urals, that is, in my small homeland), then the 1st separate Czechoslovak brigade and the 1st separate Czechoslovak corps. General Ludvig Svoboda writes about this, in particular (during my service in Soviet Army Gen. Ludvig Svoboda was the President of Czechoslovakia). One of the brigades of this corps received the name of the Czech Malin.
After the war, the surviving Czechs from Volyn Malin had the opportunity to move to Novy Malin at will. They enjoyed certain privileges, for example, to cross the Soviet-Czechoslovak border without a visa in a private car and travel through Soviet territory to their former places of residence or visit their relatives.
But I know about this only from the words of these Czechs, I have not conducted documentary research, therefore, I cannot say for sure.