Kuty

For other places with the same name, see Kuty (disambiguation).

Kuty (Ukrainian: Кути translit. Kuty, Armenian: Կուտի, German: Kutten, Polish: Kuty, Yiddish: קוטוב translit. Kitev, Romanian: Cuturi) is an urban-type settlement in Ukraine, on the Cheremosh river, located in Kosiv Raion of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. It is notable as one of the historical centres and the namesake of a historical region of Pokuttya. Population: 4,073 (2013 est.). In 2001, population was 4,272.

The town, which means "angles" in the Ukrainian language, was first mentioned in 1469 as a village of Jan Odrowąż, the archbishop of Lviv and a personal advisor to several Polish kings. With time the settlement grew and in 1715 Jan Potocki, the voivod of Kiev granted it with a city charter. Two churches were also founded for the local Uniates and Armenians. Thanks to fast growth and the proximity to Bukovina, the town soon became a seat of starost of the land of Halych and one of the administrative centres of the Ruthenian Voivodship of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The town remained a personal property of the family of Potoccy until the partitions of Poland. In 1772, however, it fell under Austrian administration and on May 1, 1782 Kuty lost its town privileges. As a result growth was halted and Kuty remained a provincial town inhabited mostly by Jewish and Armenian merchants, without much significance. In 1849 the town had roughly 3700 inhabitants, in 1880, 6300 and in the late 1920s – 8000. Out of them roughly 3300 Jews, 1900 Hutsuls, 1300 Poles and over 500 Armenians. Around that time the town was linked with the rest of Galicia by the Kołomyja-Czerniowce railroad. However, as both Galicia and Bukovyna were under Austrian rule, the town could not capitalize on its proximity to the border.

After the collapse of the Central Powers in 1918 the town was briefly under control of the West Ukrainian People's Republic. However, soon it was seized by Romania and then passed to Poland. The town became the most important center of Armenian minority in Poland as well as one of the main border crossings between Poland and Romania. In 1930 Polish Army built a new wooden bridge across the river. [2]

It was there that the Polish president Ignacy Mościcki spent his last days in Poland before he crossed the border into exile during the Polish Defensive War of 1939. Until September 20, 1939 the town was defended by the Polish Army. Among the last soldiers to be killed by the Red Army in heavy fights for the bridge across the Cheremosh river was a notable Polish writer, Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz. After Kuty was annexed by the USSR, the area was administered by Soviet Ukraine except German occupation between 1941 and 1944.

In the spring of 1942 during the German occupation, the entire Jewish population of the town was killed by the Germans. Many were killed in the town and the rest were deported to the ghetto in Czernowitz. There were only a handful of survivors. In the spring of 1944 Ukrainian nationalists killed about 200 Poles and Armenians.

Since 1991 Kuty is a part of independent Ukraine.

Notable people

• Edmund Charaszkiewicz
• Eliasz Kuziemski (1922–2000), Polish actor
• Grzegorz Józef Romaszkan, Polish clergyman and Roman Catholic bishop
• Vira Vovk Ukrainian writer
• Abraham Reif (1870-1972), American businessman
• Jaffa Zins (*1928), Israeli writer
• Haim Drukman (1932), rabbi and educator
• Rubin J. Schachter (1904–1983), American physiologist and pharmacologist

Further reading

• PolishRoots Geography&Maps (the fifth entry)
• A historical outline of the Jewish Community of Kuty