Galicia (Eastern Europe)
Galicia or Halicz, one of the component regions of Medieval Rus, consisted of the area just north of the Carpathians to the east of Poland. It comprised an autonomous principality from 1087 to 1253, and a vassal kingdom of the Mongol Golden Horde from 1253 to 1340, when King Casimir III of Poland annexed it to his realm. Thereafter Galicia comprised a Polish province until 1772, when it became the largest part of the area annexed by Austria in the First Partition. As such, the Austrian region of Poland was known as the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. Lemberg served as the capital of Austrian Galicia, which was wholly dominated by the Polish aristocracy, despite the fact that the population of the eastern half of the province largely consisted East Slavs (Ruthenes or Ukrainians). In 1846, the important Polish city of Cracow became part of the province following the Austrian suppression of the independence of the independent republic there.
In 1918, Western Galicia became a part of the restored Republic of Poland, while Eastern Galicia briefly declared independence and attempted to join Russian Ukraine in a Ukrainian state. The Poles, however,quickly took over the region and ruled it until 1939, when Stalin annexed Eastern Galicia to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine. The old Austrian province remains divided today, with the western part Polish and the eastern Ukrainian.
Principal cities: Lviv (formerly Lvov, Lwow, Lemberg); Krakow, Przemysl
The name Galicia also can refer to an Autonomous Region of Spain.
