Rivne was first mentioned in 1283 as one of the inhabited places of Halych-Volhynia. From the second half of the 14th century it was under the Great Duchy of Lithuania and from 1569 in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1492 the city was granted Magdeburg rights. Following the partition of Poland, in 1793 Rivne became a part of Russian Empire, and in 1797 it was declared as a regional town of the Volhynian Governorate.
During World War I and the period of chaos shortly after, it was briefly under German, Ukrainian, Bolshevik, and Polish forces. In April�May 1919 Rivne served as the temporary capital of Ukrainian People's Republic. At the conclusion of the conflict, in accordance with the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 it became a part of Polish Volhynian Voivodeship for the period between the two World Wars.
In 1939, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the partition of Poland, Rivne was occupied by the Soviet Union. From December of the same year Rivne became the centre of the newly established Rivne Oblast, within the Ukrainian SSR. On June 28, 1941 Rivne was captured by Nazi Germany, which later established the city as the administrative centre of Reichskommissariat Ukraine. At the time, roughly half of Rivne's inhabitants were Jewish; of these, about 23,000 were taken to a pine grove in Sosenki and killed between 6 and 8 November. A ghetto was established for the remaining 5,000 Jews. In July 1942, its population was sent some 70 kilometres north to Kostopil where they were killed; the ghetto was subsequently liquidated. Later on, a memorial complex of 20 thousand square meters was established, commemorating the killing of 17,500 Jews during the Holocaust. On June 6, 2012, the World War II Jewish burial site has been vandalized, allegedly as part of an anti-Semitic act.
On February 2, 1944, the city was liberated by the Red Army in the Battle of Rovno, and remained part of Soviet Ukraine until the break-up of the Soviet Union in
