Excerpts on the history of origin and activities of the phosphate plant in the village of Nezvysko in Pokuttia during the interwar period (1919-1939)

Abstract

The Towarnitsky brothers from Lviv owned that enterprise. It was the only production of phosphate mineral fertilizers in Western Ukraine. There were 1,846 inhabitants in the village. The Polish community numbered 248 people. Here were their furriers, locksmiths, painters, tinsmiths, milkmen, weavers. In Nezvysko, there was a post office and a police station. Polish king Ignacy Svincicki held a conference on November 29, 1929, on the large mining of Nezvysko phosphates at the Royal Castle of Warsaw. Subsequently, the allocated funds in the amount of PLN 250,000 were successfully utilized. Laboratory studies were carried out, an estimate was made, a truck was purchased, a long-term plan for the construction of a railway track from the village of Korshiv to Nezvysko was determined for delivering ore to nitrogen factories in Poland. These enterprises planned to buy 60,000 tons of phosphates. It was planned to extract up to 80,000 tons of ore in Nezvysko annually. In 1929, the plant became state property. Trial operations of the mines were mastered by workers of the Kalush Joint-Stock Company TESP, who lived in a large house in the center of the village. Hard work made the workers go on strike on July 27, 1923, demanding a reduction of the working day, an increase in wages by 50 percent. Phosphates were first studied by Austrian mining engineer Adolf Pauli in 1886 on Mount Red. During World War I, great battles took place there and many houses were burned and destroyed, the bridge over the Dnister River was destroyed as well. And although life somehow changed for the better, the peasants did not perceive the occupation of Western Ukraine lands by the Polish authorities. The Poles, by force of police, law, terror, established new rules and orders for Pokuttia. The policy of settling (colonization), census, assimilation, legalized Polish rule in Galicia. Researchers from the Lviv Polytechnic Institute have confirmed the efficiency of the production of phosphorus fertilizers from raw materials in Nezvysko. However, the implementation of major plans was affected by the general crisis and the conditions for the ecological development of the Second Polish Republic. The failure of the banking system to finance a large production in Nezvysko led to the disruption of the implementation of the Development of Nezvysko Phosphates royal program. It was not implemented until September 17, 1939, the time when the Red Army launched an action to «liberate Western Ukraine and Western Belarus» in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The plan for the construction of a railway track from Korshiv (near Kolomyia) to Nezvysko was not implemented either.
With the help of documents from the Ivano-Frankivsk archives, we analyze the socio-economic situation of Nezvysko as part of Pokuttia in the interwar period.