Ostrog

a city and administrative center of Ostrog Raion, Rovno Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, 13 km from the Ostrog railroad station on the Rovno-Shepetovka line. Population, 10,900 (1974). Products include furniture, butter, cheese, refined sugar, canned fruits, beer, bricks, and drainage pipes. Ostrog also has a food-processing combine. There is logging. The city has a museum of history and local lore.

Ostrog is first mentioned in the Hypation Chronicle for the year 1100. During the late 12th century it became part of the Vladimir-Volyn Principality. In the 13th and early 14th centuries the city was part of the Galicia-Volyn Principality. Ostrog belonged to the Ostrozhskii princes form the 14th to early 17th centuries. From 1576 to 1582,1. Fedorov lived in Ostrog and set up a printing establishment there. In 1793 the city became part of the Russian Empire. Between 1920 and 1939, Ostrog was part of bourgeois Poland, and in September 1939 it was reunited with the Ukrainian SSR. Ostrog was occupied by fascist German troops from July 3, 1941, to Jan. 13, 1944. It was liberated by a partisan unit under the command of A. Z. Odukha.

On Zamkovaia, or Krasnaia, Hill, there are the remains of the castle of the Ostrozhskii princes (14th to 16th centuries). These include the Bogoiavlenskaia Church (15th century), which was built in the style of Russian architecture of the 12th and 13th centuries. Remaining towers are the Murovana (14th to 16th centuries) and the Kruglaia, or Novaia (16th century). Northwest of the castle are ruins of the city fortifications, including the Tatarskaia and Lutskaia towers, both dating to the 16th century. In the village of Mezhirichi, a suburb of Ostrog, is situated the Trinity Monastery (15th and 16th centuries), whose Trinity Church (15th century) was modeled on the Bogoiavlenskaia Church in Ostrogo

a temporary or permanent fortified settlement for quartering troops. It was surrounded by a crenellate wooden structure. Ostrogi appeared in Rus’ prior to the 12th century. They were commonly used in the border regions of the country from the 14th to the 17th century and in Siberia from the late 16th to the 18th century. The settlements are referred to in the chronicles as movable ostrozhki (small ostrogi), used for besieging and storming towns. Unlike towns, the ostrogi were originally points of secondary importance. A distinction was made between zhilye ostrogi (permanent ostrogi) and stoialye ostrogi (temporary ostrogi). The ostrogi were made of logs embedded vertically in the ground or slanted inward. Many ostrogi later became cities. In the 18th and 19th centuries the word ostrog was also used to refer to a prison surrounded by a wall.