Podolia or Podillia[a] is a historic region in Eastern Europe, located in the west-central and south-western parts of Ukraine and in northeastern Moldova (i.e. northern Transnistria).

The Podolian Upland, an elongated, up to 472 ft (144 m) high plateau stretches from the Western and Southern Bug rivers to the Dniester, and includes mountainous regions with canyon-like fluvial valleys.

Podolia lies east of historic Red Ruthenia, i.e. the eastern half of Galicia, beyond the Seret River, a tributary of the Dniester.

Two large rivers, with numerous tributaries, drain the region: the Dniester, which forms its boundary with Moldova and is navigable throughout its length, and the Southern Bug, which flows almost parallel to the former in a higher, sometimes swampy, valley, interrupted in several places by rapids.

The chief settlements include Kamianets-Podilskyi, the traditional capital, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, Rîbnița, Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Haisyn, Balta, Bar, Camenca, Yampil, Bratslav, and Letychiv.

The Romans left traces of their rule in Trajan's Wall, which stretches through the modern districts of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Nova Ushytsia, and Khmelnytskyi.

Nestor in the Primary Chronicle mentions four apparently Slavic tribes: the Buzhans and Dulebes along the Southern Bug River, and the Tivertsi and Ulichs along the Dniester.

[5] Podolia was invaded several times by the Crimean Tatars and Turks, and during the Deluge, also by Transylvanians and Russians, with notable Polish victories at Udycz (1606), Czarny Ostrów (1657), Uścieczko (1694).

From 1793 to 1917, part of the region was the Podolia Governorate in southwestern Russia bordering with Austria across the Zbruch River and with Bessarabia across the Dniester.

Poland disappeared as a state in a third partition in 1795 but the Polish gentry continued to maintain local control in both eastern and western Podolia over a peasant population which was primarily ethnically Ukrainian whose similarity to the other East Slavs already subject to the Habsburg monarchy was showcased in a 1772 book by Adam F. Kollár and was used as an argument in favor of annexation by the Habsburgs.

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Austrian Podolia witnessed a large-scale emigration of its peasant population to western Canada.

Says I A. Bar-Levy (Weissman), author of the "Yizkor Book" for Podolia: "It brought an end to the cultural separation of Jews from the surrounding world.

Jews began to learn modern sciences and languages, read world literature and participate in the cultural life of the nations among whom they lived.

The writers of the Haskalah in Podolia included: the forerunner Isaac Satanow (1733–1805), Menachim Mendel Lapin, author and translator, Ben-Ami (Mordecai Rabinowitz), who wrote in Russian, and many others.

Eastern Podolia remained in the Ukrainian SSR and between 1922 and 1940, in the southwestern part, the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created.

In 1927 there was a massive uprising of peasants and factory workers in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Tiraspol and other cities of southern Ukrainian SSR against Soviet authorities.

Troops from Moscow were sent to the region and suppressed the unrest, causing around 4000 deaths, according to US correspondents sent to report about the insurrection, which was at the time completely denied by the Kremlin official press.

Starting in July 1941, the Jewish inhabitants were subjected to mass extermination by shooting in a German campaign carried out by four Einsatzgruppen ("operational groups") specially organized for the purpose.

[10] Podillia is also notable as the birthplace of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, and as the cradle of the Frankist movement, a controversial Jewish religious sect.