I. Ludvipol: A Modem Shtetl Modern
A Brief History of the Region Today the map shows a town called Sosnovoye, but for hundreds of years it was called Ludvipol. Now it is in the Ukraine, but for the first three centuries of its recorded existence, it was in eastern Poland. It is a small but resilient village, home to hundreds of Jew- ish families. The region around Ludvipol, known as Volhynia (Volyn in Yid- dish), is a flat, fertile country drained by the Bug and Prypet rivers and the Prypet’s tributaries, among them the Slusch River. Many of its towns made their first appearance on the historic record as prop - erties of Polish and Kievan nobles, as did Ludvipol and Kostopol, the administrative center, rather like a county seat, of the district that included Ludvipol. From ancient times Volhynia had a rich rural landscape. Wild horses, deer, and bison roamed its forests before Tatar invaders burned away large tracts; extensive woodlands, still remaining, yielded timber, skins, wild berries, and mushrooms. On its large farming estates, orchards of pear, apple, and cherry blossomed white in springtime and fields of grain ripened in summer, while both small farmers and large landowners raised potatoes, sugar beets, cattle, chickens, hogs, and geese. The large estates were owned by Polish gentry, who often em- ployed Jews as estate managers and rent collectors. As the centu- ries went by, that economic symbiosis caused the larger but less wealthy Ukrainian population of Volhynia to identify Jews with the Poles, from whom the Ukrainians were often — but unsuccessfully
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