EAST CHATHAM, NEW YORK — The very name of the Ukrainian scouting organization Plast’s largest camp in America, Vovcha Tropa — which means “the wolf’s trek” — is redolent of adventure.
Its 352 hilly acres in the picturesque foothills of New York state’s Berkshire Mountains were chosen in 1953 because they reminded the Ukrainian immigrants who purchased it of the Carpathian Mountains in the homeland many had left during the turmoil of World War II.
When the Soviet Union took control of Ukraine it banned the organization, but after World War II Ukrainian emigrants revived Plast abroad, where it flourished. Since Ukrainian independence, it has relaunched in Ukraine and long played an important role in the country’s development.
Many Plast members took leading roles in the protests that became the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, and when ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s security forces shot and killed more than 100 protestors, Plast members were among the dead and wounded.
And when Russia invaded Ukraine and sparked the war that continues to this day, Plast members were among the first to join the armed volunteer battalions that confronted the invaders and their proxies.
But for most American scouts, Plast is a bridge between modern life and Ukrainian tradition and between the United States and Ukraine
Keeping traditions alive
Modeled on the world scouting movement founded by British General Robert Baden Powell in 1908, Plast combines the precepts of Scouting with Ukrainians traditions and patriotism.
Although it calls itself “non-political,” it has also never shied away from supporting Ukraine’s fight for independence or helping in its struggle to counter the Kremlin’s attempts to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty.
However, in practice, much of Plast resembles ordinary scouting and camping activities familiar to all Americans.
When the Kyiv Post visited Vovcha Tropa in August, there were roughly 320 campers divided into four separate camps, with boys and girls in different groups. Two are for so-called “novaky,” younger members aged from around 10 to early teenagers, who live in barracks. Another two, called “Yunatstvo,” are for older teens who sleep in tents.
The camp routine begins around 8 a. m. with an assembly where they raise the American and Ukrainian flags.
Plast campers enjoy the last day of the camp. (Askold Krushelnycky)
During the day, the scouts learn to use tools to clear woods and build camps and shelters, gather wood for fires, find and prepare food in the wild and a variety of other skills that would have been familiar to pioneers in the American west.
At least once each summer, the older campers go on three-day hikes where they carry everything they need for the trek.
Plast also emphasizes developing communications skills, and the camp schedules discussions on various topics and provides free time for campers to talk among themselves or read — something helped by a prohibition on smartphones.
At Vovcha Tropa, everyone tries to speak Ukrainian — though for youngsters who are second- or third-generation Ukrainian-Americans, English tends to come easier.
Around a third of the campers are children of more recent immigrants, and some were even born in Ukraine. They help their fellow Plast members learn a fresh, contemporary version of the Ukrainian language.
Borys Chabursky, 24, was in charge of the older boys’ camp this summer. His parents were born in the U.S. to Ukrainian refugees who arrived in America after World War II, and all were Plast members. His parents met at a scout camp.
Chabursky, who grew up in Pennsylvania, said he and his brother Danylo, who helps run the camp, started attending Plast events at preschool age and spent much of their youth at camps and other scouting events.
At 18, scouts become adult Plast members and are eligible to join groups called “kurins,” a Cossack name for a military unit. The kurins specialize in activities like boating and sailing for the Chornomorsky (Black Sea) Kurin and hikes and expeditions for the Burlaka (wanderers) Kurin.
Other kurins include activities for mountain climbing and skiing enthusiasts. They organize camps and reunions either on properties belonging to Plast or at other locations reflecting their interests.
“Plast allows another way to channel that pride and that heritage and faith in your nationality into a direction that is beneficial,” Chabursky said.
Plast “stanytsias” — the term is used for outposts around the world — exist in most towns and cities where Ukrainians have settled in America. Apart from camps, they hold regular meetings throughout the year with activities like hikes and educational excursions.
There are also studies to gain proficiency badges in different facets of traditional scout craft like hiking, setting up camps, first aid and pioneering, now augmented by tests on more modern skills like mechanics, new technology and computing. There are also social events like concerts and balls.
Chabursky, who works as a certified welder, said he feels a responsibility to pass on the Plast tradition. “I remember how I looked up to my counselors when I was a young Plastun and I hope that I can be an equally good example,” he said.
Building bridges
In the years since Ukrainian independence, many Plast members from the diaspora have visited Plast camps in Ukraine and vice-versa.
Last year, Chabursky visited a Plast camp in Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains and was struck by how “vibrant” the movement in Ukraine was. “The kids have such creativity, such imaginations, such energy,” he said. “They are phenomenal kids and ideal Plastuny.”
The head of the older girls’ camp at Vovcha Tropa this summer was Chrystyna Tsuvanyk, 22. Her grandparents on her mother’s side arrived as refugees from Ukraine after World War II and started the local Plast stanytsia. Her father was born in Ukraine and arrived in America in 1995.
Tsuvanyk, who holds a master’s degree in education, says she is committed to Plast “because the Ukrainian culture isn’t very prominent in America — we have little hubs — but coming together for summer camps allows the kids to keep up the traditions and to keep our language going.”
She has been to Ukraine twice and was inspired by the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, whose aftermath she saw when she visited Kyiv in 2014.
Contact also goes in the opposite direction — Roman Dzedyk from Lviv has been attending Plast camps in the U.S. since 2013 and helps run the older boys’ camp at Vovcha Tropa.
Along with other Plast members, Dzedyk helped set up self-defense units during the EuroMaidan protests in 2014.
“We were thrust into some of the hottest places, and you got the sense that people expected and relied on us far more than on others,” he said. “We knew what each of us was capable of and when something was needed, we responded swiftly and in a coordinated way.”
Dzedyk said he lost Plast friends during the protests and then later in the war.
Plast emphasizes cultivating future leaders in Ukraine, and “after the last elections, seven Plast members entered parliament… three of them in the Holos Party and some in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party and former President Petro Poroshenko’s party,” Dzedyk told the Kyiv Post. “These are people who became Plast members in the 1990s and now, in adulthood, are taking their places in society.”
He also said that Ukrainian Plast camps were much more demanding than those in the U.S.
“In Ukraine, kids come with one backpack for everything they need for two weeks and sleep in sleeping bags on the ground, under canvas. Here, they come with 15 pairs of socks, 10 t-shirts, another bag of clothes, a chair, a bed. Here there are showers with warm water. For us, there are Carpathian rivers.”
Lasting legacy
Yurko Huk, 73, a member of Plast’s supervisory board and former head of the organization, says that scouting teaches young Ukrainians important values — respect, dignity, empathy and compassion — and helps build a lasting sense of community among its participants.
Huk would know. Born in a refugee camp in Germany in 1947, he arrived in America in 1950 with a ship full of other newcomers. He has been involved with Plast all his life, including 13 years during which he ran the summer camps.
“The whole goal of Plast is based on scouting principles to develop an enlightened Ukrainian citizenry: to take leadership positions, to develop self-discipline and teamwork. It’s a whole life process,” he said.
Huk also believes the kurin system for adults creates the foundation for lifelong friendship and networking among Plast members. “I’ve probably got over 50 friends that I’ve known for 65 years or more,” he told the Kyiv Post.
That network is what keeps young Ukrainians coming back to Plast and older ones donating their time to keep the tradition of Ukrainian scouting alive.
On the last day of camp, the members of each of the four camps take part in one of the most popular Plast activities: building their own giant bonfires from wood they cut and gather themselves.
As evening falls, they light the bonfires and sit around them into the early morning hours.
The next day, the last roll-call assemblies are held, an event tinged with sadness and some tears as the campers bid goodbye to their new friends.
For many, those friendships last a lifetime, and campers look forward to returning to Vovcha Tropa’s almost mystical atmosphere the next summer.
Plast scouting organization got its Ukraine start in 1911
Modeled on the world scouting movement founded in 1908 by British military hero General Robert Baden Powell, Plast began operating in western Ukraine in 1911, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The organization swiftly attracted large numbers of youth, many of whom would play leading roles in the struggle for Ukrainian independence.
The camps reflect the influence of Baden Powell’s military background. They wear uniforms, conduct marching drills and military-style morning and evening roll calls are part of the daily routine. Members are taught to value self-discipline, patriotism, chivalry, courtesy and punctuality. Altruism and a sense of service are instilled as important virtues, and scouts are supposed to perform a good deed each day.
Some of the core values are expressed in their greeting to one another — “SKOB,” an acronym for the Ukrainian words Sylno, Krasno, Oberezhno, Bystro, which can be translated as “strength, beauty, vigilantly, swiftly.”
Many early Plast members became officers who fought to form an independent country when the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved after World War I. Some military units were almost entirely Plast members.
While the independence movement was stymied and Poland took control of Ukrainian lands, Plast grew during the inter-war years.
Its purpose was not to breed revolt, but the organization did provide a place for patriotic young Ukrainians to meet and share their visions for their country’s future.
Many Plast members joined underground resistance movements such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The eventual leader of the largest OUN faction, Stepan Bandera, and the head of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), Roman Shukhevych, were both Plast members.
At the end of the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians found themselves in refugee camps in areas of Germany and Austria controlled by the western allies. Many did not want to return to their homes, then under brutal Stalinist rule.
Plast members among the displaced persons revived the scouting movement in the camps, and it attracted many new members who had been too young to join when they were children in Ukraine.
In the late 1940s the refugees dispersed and started Plast groups around the world.
Since the fall of communism and Ukrainian independence, the largest Plast group is in Ukraine itself. Plast members from the U.S. and Canada helped reintroduce the movement to Ukraine in the waning years of the Soviet Union, when Communist rule was weakening but the KGB still had a vicious sting.
In August 1989, around 200 KGB and police agents attacked and wrecked one of Plast’s first attempts to create a camp in western Ukraine’s Lviv Oblast.
Despite that brutal episode, the communist authorities could not stop Plast’s ideas from taking root again in Ukraine, and the organization flourished.
Today Plast has more than 8,000 members in Ukraine and is growing rapidly.
