down by fleeing Russian forces. After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the city was proclaimed part of the West Ukrainian People's Republic on 11 November 1918. After Polish forces captured Lviv during the Polish-Ukrainian War, Ternopil became the country's temporary capital (22 November to 30 December 1918). After the act of union between Western-Ukrainian Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR), Ternopil formally passed under the UPR's control. On 15 July 1919 the city was captured by Polish forces. In 1920 the exiled Ukrainian government of Symon Petlura accepted Polish control of Ternopil and of the entire area in exchange for Polish assistance in restoration of Petlura's government in Kyiv. This effort ultimately failed, and in July and August 1920 the Red Army captured Ternopil in the course of the Polish-Soviet War. The city then served as the capital of the Galician Soviet Socialist Republic. By the terms of the Riga treaty, the Soviets and Poles partitioned Ukraine. For the next 19 years, Ternopil area fell under Polish control. From 1922 to September 1939, Ternopil served as the capital of the Tarnopol Voivodeship that consisted of 17 powiats. The policies of the Polish authorities, especially the assimilationist ethnic policies, affected all spheres of public life. Ukrainians, who according to the official 1939 Statistical Yearbook of Poland, supposedly made up less than half of voivodship's population, were restricted in their rights and prosecuted for any attempts to oppose the Polonization. This created a strong backlash and strengthened the position of the militant Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists whose local Ternopil branch was led by Roman Paladiychuk and Taras Stetsko, the future leader of OUN,
As the Polish state collapsed in September 1939, the former partners from the Riga treaty, the Soviets, now allied with the Germans, included Ternopil into their Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Soviets made it
