 Mykola Plaviuk was born on June 5, 1925 in the village of Rusiv in Poland (now part of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast in independent Ukraine).During World War II, Mykola became active in the Plast scouting movement in western Ukraine, which provided training after which many youth subsequently joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.After the war, he fled to Germany where he received a diploma from the University of Munich in economics.