Chernobyl In Winter, Pripyat, Kiev Oblast, Ukraine

History
Chernobyl first appeared in a charter of 1193, described as a hunting-lodge of Knyaz Rostislavich. It was a crown village of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 13th century. The village was granted as a fiefdom to Filon Kmita, a captain of the royal cavalry, in 1566. The province containing Chernobyl was transferred to the Kingdom of Poland in 1569, and then annexed by the Russian Empire in 1793. Prior to the 20th century, Chernobyl was inhabited by Ukrainian and some Polish peasants, and a relatively large number of Jews.
Chernobyl had a rich religious history. The Jews were brought by Filon Kmita, during the Polish campaign of colonization. The traditionally Christian Eastern Orthodox Ukrainian peasantry of the district was largely forced, by Poland, to convert to the Greek Catholic Uniate religion after 1596, and returned to Eastern Orthodoxy only after Ukraine was annexed by Muscovy.