furious conflict then raging between the Talmudic Jews and the Frankists; the city was the residence of Bishop Dembowski, who sided with the Frankists and ordered the public burning of the Talmud, a sentence which was carried into effect in the public streets in 1757.
After the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, the city belonged to the Russian Empire, where it was the capital of Podolia Governorate. The Russian Tsar Peter the Great, who visited the fortress twice, was impressed by its fortifications. One of the towers was used as a prison cell for Ustym Karmeliuk, a prominent peasant rebel leader of the early 19th century), who managed to escape from it three times.
Kamenetz-Podolsk was also the residence of the wealthy Joseph Yozel G�nzburg. During the latter half of the 19th century, many Jews emigrated from that city to the United States, especially to New York, where they organized a number of societies.
World War I
During the World War I, the city was occupied by Austria-Hungary in 1915. With the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, the city was briefly incorporated into several short-lived Ukrainian states: the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Hetmanate, and the Directoriya, and ended up as part of the Ukrainian SSR when Ukraine fell under Bolshevik power. During the Directorate period, the city was chosen as de facto capital of Ukraine after the Russian Communist forces occupied Kiev. During the Polish-Soviet War, the city was captured by the Polish Army, but it was later ceded to Soviet Russia in the 1921 Treaty of Riga, which determined the future of the area for the next seven decades as part of the Ukrainian SSR.
Soviet times
Poles and Ukrainians have always dominated the city's population. However, as a commercial center, Kamianets-Podilskyi has been a multiethnic and multi-religious city with substantial Jewish and Armenian minorities. Under Soviet rule it became subject to severe persecutions, and
