Plast is 100

The monument will depict a Plastun (Ukrainian scout) leaning over the fire, which will be “burning” in the night time thanks to the special red lamp installed in there.

According to Liubomyr Shymkiv, chairman of Ternopil Stanytsia of the Plast National Scout Organization of Ukraine, the two-meter bronze sculpture will embody the image of the Plast activist from Hnylytsi, Zbarazh raion, who later became an OUN member, political prisoner Mykola Soroka, who spent most of his life in labour camps.

In Vorkuta Soroka created an underground organization “OUN-Pivnich,” which fought for the rights of political prisoners; he also participated in the Kengir uprising in Kazakhstan.

Since the 1960s he was serving a sentence in Mordovia, where he died after 34 years of imprisonment. Soroka organized literary, religious, historical events everywhere he went.

He was considered the ideological patriarch of the political prisoners in Stalin’s camps.

In 1992 the remains of Soroka were moved from Mordovia to Ukraine and were reburied in the Lychakivske Cemetery in Lviv.

It is planned to erect the monument to the scout in Ternopil already this year.

The sum of 120,000 hryvnias is needed for its construction.

During the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Ukrainian scouting organization “Plast” on Saturday, April 21, 4,000 hryvnias have already been raised.