Russians take Stanisławów

The British chronology of the war records under 30 October 1914 the capture of Stanisławów by Russian troops. This entry is hard to reconcile with other sources. According to Ukrainian studies of the town’s history, the Russians entered Stanisławów as early as the turn of August and September, and lost it for the first time only in February 1915. At the end of October, however, the town was indeed under threat, as Austro-Hungarian troops and Polish legionnaires had approached it from the direction of the Carpathians.

A town in eastern Galicia

Stanisławów, today the Ukrainian Ivano-Frankivsk, was one of the largest towns of Eastern Galicia, the seat of a district, a garrison and an important railway junction at the foot of the Carpathians. In 1910 it had more than 33,000 inhabitants. Almost half of them were Jews. Alongside them lived chiefly Poles, as well as Ukrainians (Ruthenians), Germans and Armenians.

After the defeats in the battles of Galicia, in the same days in which the Russians took Lviv, the Austrians abandoned the town without a fight and withdrew into the mountains. The Russians entered Stanisławów on 30 August according to some sources, on 3 September according to others. The town came under Russian military administration, which bore down particularly hard on the Jewish population.

Legionnaires near Stanisławów

In October, during the Austro-Hungarian counter-offensive in Galicia, small forces covering the passes also moved north out of the Carpathians. In the west the corps of General Peter Hofmann took Stryj, but lost it after a few days in fighting that formed part of the Battle of Chyrów. Further east the group of General Karol Trzaska-Durski advanced, including the 2nd and 3rd Infantry Regiments of the Polish Legions, the nucleus of the later II Brigade. On 24 October the legionnaires took Nadwórna, and over the following days, clearing the area of smaller Russian units, they pushed on towards Stanisławów.

The Russians, however, sent larger forces here. On 29 October, at the village of Mołotków, a few kilometres north-west of Nadwórna, some 6,000 legionnaires clashed with Russian forces roughly twice as numerous. The Battle of Mołotków was one of the first large, and at the same time bloodiest, battles of the Legions against the Russians. The Poles lost more than 200 killed and several hundred wounded and prisoners, and had to withdraw behind the river Bystrzyca, to positions near Pasieczna. The threat to Stanisławów was over. It may well be this Russian victory, and the driving of the enemy away from the town, that the British chronicle recorded as its capture.

The town changes hands

At the beginning of November, after the failure of the Central Powers on the Vistula, the Austro-Hungarian troops again fell back along the whole Galician front. Stanisławów remained in Russian hands throughout the winter. Only in February 1915 did the troops of General Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin briefly retake the town, but the Russians soon recovered it. They finally left Stanisławów in June 1915, after the breakthrough at Gorlice. The front returned here once more in 1916, during the Brusilov Offensive. The fighting and successive occupations destroyed almost half the houses in the town.