RADEGAST STATUE
God of the sun, abundance and harvest, is a statue standing on the ridge of the Radhost Mountain. It is located in the cadastral area of the village of Dolni Becva, approximately one kilometer southwest of Pustevny. The statue was created by Albin Polasek, a native of Frenstat pod Radhostem and a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago.
The current statue is made of limestone. It stands 3.20 meters tall and weighs 3.38 tons. The pagan god has a male body. His head takes the form of a lion with a predatory grin and he wears a helmet shaped like a bull’s head with horns. He is clad in a robe adorned with ornaments, featuring a wide, decorated waistband with a sun-shaped clasp. Human legs clad in leather boots protrude from beneath the robe. In his right hand he holds a cornucopia with a duck perched on it. With his left hand he leans on an axe with a long handle, perhaps a valaska (a regional piece of equipment).
The sculptor Albin Polasek (b. Feb. 14, 1879 – d. May 19, 1965) created a statue of the pagan god Radegast for the Pohorje Radhošť Association. The statue was moved to its pedestal twice. During the first journey in 1930, a truck carrying the statue got stuck on a bend in Pustevny and six teams of draft horses from Trojanovice had to pull it to its destination. After the statue was placed on its pedestal, a heavy rain fell and a storm broke out. Lightning struck and killed one of the soldiers standing guard of honor. The monument was made of artificial stone, which could not withstand the harsh weather conditions. The Regional Institute for Artistic Care in Ostrava therefore decided that a copy should be erected on the Radhost Mountain in place of the valuable original. Jan Sobek (from Leskovec), a monumental stonemason, and a sculptor Jaroslav Machala (from Vsetin), who supervised the work, felt honored to be commissioned to create a copy from natural granite. Thus, a seven-ton statue made its journey up the mountain, to an altitude of over a thousand meters, in July 1998. The original one can be seen in the lobby of the town hall in Frenstat pod Radhostem.
