Monday, April 15, 2013

The Village of Pluzhnoe, seat of Pluzhnoe Township


In 1906, the Mennonite villages of Stanislavka, Leeleva, Fuerstenthal, Mikailovka and Jadwinin were all part of Pluzhnoe Township (Pluzhanskoy) (note that spellings of these villages vary from source to source).  The seat of the township was the village of Pluzhnoe.

Pluzhnoe (Russian: Плужное; Ukrainian: Pluzne, Плу́жне; Polish: Płużne; German: Plushnoje) is a village located just over 15 miles (by road) south of Ostrog.  The Mennonite village of Leeleva (Lisna) is located less than 5 miles to the northwest of this village.  Pluzhnoe was established in either 1590 or 1614 and suffered destruction in its early days at the hands of Mongol (Tatar) raiders.  The village was named after a village blacksmith who produced plows (Ukrainian for plow: плужити; pluzhiti).  The village was the site of the Church of St. Michailivska, built around 1703, as well as a palace belonging to the Jablonovsky Family (the same family who leased land to the Mennonites of Karolswalde).  During the 19th Century, the village was a township center in Ostrog County and during the last quarter of the century was the second largest industrial center in the county, after the town of Ostrog itself.  In 1906, the village was home to 434 households including 2,302 people, a large percentage of whom were Jewish.  The village was part of the 3rd police precinct of the county.  A Polish Geography Dictionary compiled in the last quarter of the 19th Century describe Pluzhnoe as a cheerful, beautiful little village surrounded by gardens and orchards.  

After the Polish-Soviet War when the border between Poland and the Soviet Union was dran near Karolswalde, several villages that had previously belonged to Kunevskoy were moved into Pluzhanskoy, into Pluzhnoe’s jurisdiction.  By 1978 the population of the village peaked in the neighborhood of 5,600 people. 

After the fall of the USSR, the bakery, the brick factory and a plant producing antibiotics for farm animals all were forced to close their doors.  Today the village is part of the Ukrainian Khmelnytsky Oblast or Province (Хмельницька область), Izyaslav Raion or District (Ізяславському районі), Pluzhnenska Village Rada or Council (Плужненська сільська рада) and has a population of almost 3,000 people.  Two banks, a saw-mill, a post office, a barber, a library and several schools today call Pluzhnoe home.  A large natural park, Tract Kruglik (Ukr: Krýhlyk; Крýглик), sits immediately south of the village, near the site of an old natural spring.
  





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