KAM'YANETS-PODILSKYY

Russian Kamenets-podolsky, also spelled Kamenec-podol'skij, city, Khmelnytskyy oblast (province), western Ukraine, on the Smotrych River. The city is one of the largest and oldest in the Dniester River basin, dating to at least the 11th century. Lying at a superbly defensible site where the river forms a loop, it was long a frontier fortress and centre of the Lithuanian province of Podolye. The coming of the railway in the 19th century revived the town, which had been absorbed by Russia in 1793. It is now a varied industrial centre with food, building-material, and scientific industries, as well as technical colleges and teacher-training and agricultural institutes. A cement plant built in the 1970s is one of Ukraine's largest and led to substantial population growth. Pop. (1991 est.) 104,900.