Pliushch, Vasyl

Pliushch, Vasyl [Плющ, Василь; Pljušč, Vasyl’], b 10 January 1903 in Warsaw, d 16 November 1976 in Munich. Physician and political figure; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. A graduate of Kyiv Medical Institute (1928), he directed an interraion tuberculosis dispensary in Rivne and conducted research at the Odesa Scientific Research Institute for Tuberculosis. He began to work as a specialist in tuberculosis at the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute for Tuberculosis in Kyiv in 1932 and at Kyiv Institute for the Upgrading of Physicians. In 1938 he helped organize the Ukrainian Scientific Society of Physicians-Phthisiatrists and became its first scientific secretary. During the Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine he was sent as a tuberculosis inspector to Lviv, where he implemented a plan for a network of dispensaries and organized and directed the Lviv Tuberculosis Institute. A postwar refugee and displaced person, he worked in West Germany and was president (1951–3) of the Supreme Council of the Central Representation of the Ukrainian Emigration in Germany, and founder and president of the Association for the Liberation of Ukraine abroad. His scientific publications include papers and monographs, such as Klinika gematogenno-disseminirovannogo tuberkuleza legkikh (Clinic of Hematogenetically Disseminated Lung Tuberculosis, 1938) and Narysy z istoriï ukraïns'koï medychnoï nauky ta osvity (Outlines of the History of Ukrainian Medical Science and Education, 2 vols, 1970, 1983). He contributed medical articles to Entsyklopediia ukraïnoznavstva (Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 10 vols, 1955–84) and wrote publicistic articles in Ukrainian, English, and German.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]