High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The oblast was created as part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on December 4, 1939. The territory of the former Drohobych Oblast was incorporated into the Lviv Oblast in 1959. The oblast's strategic position at the heart of central Europe and as the gateway to the Carpathians has caused it to change hands many times over the centuries. It was ruled variously by Great Moravia, Kievan Rus', Poland and by one of Kievan Rus' successors, the state of Galicia-Volhynia (circa 1200 to 1340), then by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1340 to 1772), the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1772 to 1918), and Poland (1918 to 1939), when it was part of the Lwów Voivodship of the Second Republic of Poland.