The Czortków uprising (Polish: Powstanie Czortkowskie) was a failed attempt at resisting Soviet state repressions by the young anti-Soviet Poles most of whom were prewar students from the local high school.

The insurgents attempted to storm the local Red Army barracks and a prison in order to release Polish soldiers incarcerated there.

Between 1939 and the 1941 Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet NKVD arrested and imprisoned about 500,000 Poles including state officials, civil servants, uniformed officers and scores of the so-called "enemies of the people" such as food producers, engineers, merchants and the clergy.

[6] In December 1939, a large contingent of the Red Army troops from the garrison in Czortków left town to fight in the Winter War against Finland.

The plotters wanted to seize a train with the anticipated help from the already freed Polish officers, and travel to nearby Romania via Zaleszczyki.

Historian Jan Tomasz Gross writes that the plotters were beaten with wooden poles, handguns, bottles and metal bars, and "kicked until their jaws and ribs were broken.

Eighteen months later on 2 July 1941, just after Operation Barbarossa, the Soviets secretly executed eight Dominican friars from the Roman Catholic Church in the town.

[5] Władysław Buczkowski, a witness to the uprising, wrote in his memoirs that even though he did not take part in the revolt, he was arrested on January 27 and, after torture, was sent to prison in Tarnopol.