After the disintegration of the Grand duchy of Halych-Volodymyr (also called Galich-Vladimir Rus') circa 1340, Poland and Lithuania divided up the region between them, Poland taking Western Volhynia and Lithuania Eastern Volhynia. After 1569 Volhynia formed a province of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During this period Poles and Jews settled in the area. The Roman and Greek Catholic churches became established in the province, and many Orthodox churches were forcibly annexed by the latter. Records of the first agricultural colonies of Mennonites date from 1783.
After the third Partition of Poland in 1795 Volhynia became a province (gubernia) of Russian Empire. By the end of the 19th century Volhynia had over 200,000 German settlers (colonists), most of whom immigrated from Congress Poland. A small number of Czech settlers also arrived. Although the economically area was developing rather quickly, upon the eve of the First World War, it was still the most rural province in Russia.
In 1921 after the end of the Polish-Soviet War, the treaty known as the Peace of Riga devided Volhynia between Poland and the USSR. Poland took the larger part and established a Wolhynian Voivodship. (See the map at Voivodships of Poland). Most of eastern Volhynia became part of the Zhitomir oblast.
In 1935-1938 Stalin had the Poles of Eastern Volhynia deported -- the first ethnic deportation in the history of the Soviet Union -- see Polish minority in Soviet Union.
In 1939 the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact returned all of Vohynia to the Soviet Union ( confirmed as a result of World War II). In the course of the Nazi-Soviet population transfers which followed this German-Soviet reconciliation, the German minority population of Vohynia migrated to Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany. The Nazi authorities later evacuated them. Most of the Jewish and Polish minorities became victims of the ethnic clensing by Nazis and the UPA.