Iosif Dlugach
1902 – 1941
Iosif Dlugach was born in 1902 in the town of Khmilnyk in Podolia. His father, Leib, was a prominent entrepreneur and the owner of a technologically advanced automated roller mill. Flour milling was a common business among Eastern European Jews. By the beginning of the twentieth century, they owned 365 flour mills.
Leib Dlugach, a merchant of the second guild, had six children. His daughters, Sofia and Raisa, received an excellent education at home, and both married successfully. All four sons graduated from institutions of higher education and became professionals, in accordance with their father’s ideas about the paths they should follow. The eldest, Alexander, trained as a lawyer; Mikhail became an engineer; Vladimir, an economist; and the youngest, everyone’s favorite, Iosif – known in the family as Yuzek – became an architect. Interestingly, all the children first moved with their parents from Khmilnyk to Vinnytsia, then made their own separate ways to Kyiv, and by the end of the 1920s all of them had ended up in Moscow, which ultimately saved them and their families from the Holocaust.
In Kyiv, Iosif enrolled at the conservatory to study piano. Yuzek was a perfectionist, and he was endlessly frustrated by the fact that he could not span more than an octave because his hands were very small. He therefore did the same thing as his father, from whom he had inherited his love of music: he had the webbing between his thumb and index finger cut on both hands in order to increase his reach at the keyboard.
The same character trait led Iosif, in his third year at the conservatory, toward architecture. Apparently realizing that he would never become a great pianist – and unwilling to settle for anything less – Yuzek returned to something that had always fascinated him and had always come to him easily and almost playfully.
He had loved drawing since childhood, and within the family he had acquired a reputation as an artist. His cheerful illustrations for the humorous magazine Shesternya (“The Gear”), produced by the Dlugach brothers together with their friends, have survived from that period. “From the dreadful whirlpool / we emerged – / six iron sparks,” read a poem on the first page. “May the disk burn brighter / amid the blind round dance of worlds!”
The feuilletons written more than a century ago can still bring a smile, but the magazine’s chief attraction was undoubtedly Iosif’s drawings. Despite his young age, his lively, ironic illustrations looked entirely professional.
“Dear reader, we have made you marvel at the sea of truly fraternal diligence that Dlugach Yuzya poured into illustrating Dlugach Volodya,” the editors wrote in their concluding address. Vladimir Dlugach, the author of the poems and feuilletons published in Shesternya, later became a writer and screenwriter, the author of the popular children’s novellas Maestro Vorobushek and Troika bez troiki, as well as the guidebook Touring Moscow.
In 1926, Iosif moved from Kyiv to Moscow and enrolled at the Higher Art and Technical Institute (VKhUTEIN). He chose the Faculty of Architecture and studied under the outstanding masters Konstantin Melnikov and Nikolai Ladovsky, alongside Yevgeny Yokheles and Anatoly Kaplun, who would later become prominent figures in Soviet architecture. His studies were exceptionally stimulating. Constructivism and Rationalism were the dominant architectural movements of the time, and heated debates between their supporters and opponents often unfolded right in the institute’s classrooms.
Iosif’s entry into the profession was remarkably swift. As early as 1929, together with architect Leonid Grinshpun, he presented a design for a 1,000-seat cinema at the Central House of the Red Army. In 1930, his article “Amateurism and Chaos” was published in the journal Construction of Moscow.
While studying at VKhUTEIN, a momentous event took place in Iosif’s life: he met the beautiful Lidia German, who soon became his wife. Her father was a well-known pediatrician, while her cousin, Pavel German, was a poet and songwriter, the author of the famous “March of the Aviators” (“Higher and Higher and Higher”), the song “Little Bricks,” the romance “Only Once in a Lifetime Do Meetings Happen,” and many other works.
Lidia was not only exceptionally beautiful but also remarkably versatile in her talents. A graduate of a German gymnasium in Kyiv, she drew beautifully, played tennis, had a sharp wit, and possessed considerable literary talent as well.
In 1931, Iosif completed his military service in the Red Army as a cadet in the training battalion of the Moscow Proletarian Rifle Division. Yuzek’s friend, fellow student, and colleague, architect Yevgeny Yokheles, wrote: “I remember him as a dashing cadet on the left flank of the training battalion in the Moscow Proletarian Division, and sitting at night over a project in the studio housed in the old Mosproekt building on Leningradskoye Highway. In that building, together, we lived through years of intense and joyful work.”
In 1937, Iosif and Lidia had a daughter, Rita.
By that time, Iosif was already a fairly well-known architect. He co-designed such projects as the House of Polar Explorers on Nikitsky Boulevard and the building of the Higher School of the Militia on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya Street in Moscow. He also took part in developing the master plans for Alma-Ata, Novomoskovsk, Pavlovo, and Chusovaya. Iosif Dlugach participated in the design of the House of Soviets in Engels, the planning of the central part of Baku’s Nagorny District, and projects in Alma-Ata, Zvenigorod, Dzerzhinsk, and Moscow. He wrote articles on architecture, was a member of the Union of Architects, and drew and photographed extensively.
He worked with equal confidence in a wide range of genres. Iosif’s surviving artistic legacy includes beautiful watercolors, graphic works, sketches, caricatures, advertisements, and posters.
In 1938, the Dlugach family moved from Malaya Tatarskaya Street to Gorky Street, into a building next to the famous Eliseevsky grocery store, where Lidia’s elder sister, Margarita, lived. Musya, as Margarita was called by the family, was married to Maks Dizhur, a high-ranking official at the People’s Commissariat of the Food Industry. Among other things, he had helped launch an oil-and-fat processing plant in Ussuriysk and had received an apartment from Mikoyan in the very center of Moscow.
The move proved to be a timely coincidence. The Dlugach family, with their newborn daughter, had been living in a semi-basement apartment, and Lidia’s elder sister, who had no children of her own, decided that an infant should not be living in such conditions and brought them to live in her apartment. They had barely moved in when Maks Dizhur was arrested on false charges of anti-Soviet terrorist activity and soon executed. Musya was arrested as well, but was released shortly afterward. She never told anyone why or how this had happened. Dizhur was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.
The new apartment had two large rooms, one of which had enough space for a grand piano. Iosif, who was after all a professionally trained pianist, never gave up music and played with pleasure whenever he had a free moment.
The prewar years proved fruitful for Iosif: he took part in the development of several major projects and published a number of articles in the journals Construction of Moscow and Architecture of the USSR. When the war began, he volunteered at the military enlistment office even though he was exempt from conscription because of his work. According to family lore, he had had a serious quarrel with his wife and went to the front partly out of spite. Whatever the circumstances, however, he never once regretted his decision, as is clear from his surviving letters home.
Before being called up, he had time to see his wife and daughter off into evacuation. They first went to Sverdlovsk and later to Chimkent, together with the Union of Architects.
Almost immediately, Iosif was sent to the Smolensk sector, serving in the engineering troops. The German Army Group Centre was advancing there, while Red Army units were desperately trying to slow the enemy’s advance toward Moscow. By early August, the front line east of Smolensk had been temporarily stabilized. In anticipation of future successes, the 50th Army, then preparing for an offensive, established the post of officer responsible for collecting captured engineering equipment. Senior Lieutenant Iosif Dlugach was appointed to this position.
“These days things are quiet here; both sides are ‘assessing’ their capabilities,” Iosif wrote in a letter dated August 21. “I am not wasting time either and am putting my ‘household’ in order. It is no small household: many carts, many horses, and a great deal of extremely valuable cargo that has to be watched constantly… The unit under my command is stationed about eight to ten kilometers from our forward positions, as regulations require. I myself often have to go right up to the front line, and I have only just returned from a day-long trip there.”
In his letters, Iosif never complained about anything, not even indirectly – perhaps because he did not want to worry his family, or perhaps because of censorship. Yet there can be little doubt that he – an intellectual, an artist and musician, a successful professional and family man who had left a comfortable home in the very center of Moscow – was steadily and confidently adapting to the hardships of everyday life at the front.
“Military life, life at the front, is becoming more and more understandable and familiar,” he wrote to Lida in the same letter. “If during the first few days it was somewhat difficult to find my bearings, by now I can deal quite easily with the different situations in which circumstances place me. Only last night we moved to a new location in a fairly organized manner, because an enemy reconnaissance aircraft had spotted our previous camp and, in order to avoid any unpleasant consequences, I decided to ‘change apartments.’ Our new ‘apartment’ is in a dry pine forest with good leafy cover overhead, and we have settled in here quite successfully.
“The nights are simply far too dark, and you, my dear, can imagine how, on such a dark and impenetrable night, in complete silence, the horses are harnessed, the carts are moved out, my entire force on foot and horseback forms up along the road and quietly sets off, only to disappear just as quietly and silently into the forest, settle somewhere else, assess the situation, camouflage ourselves and lie low so that we cannot be seen, heard, or detected… That is one of my tasks – to remain unnoticed and preserve everything entrusted to me, and so far I am managing fairly well.”
As his letters from the front show, Iosif was an open and warm-hearted man. “The longer I am here, the better I get to know the people around me,” he wrote to his wife. “Friendship and mutual understanding develop quickly here, born of a great commonality of interests and of the hardships and dangers we experience together. And I am very glad that both among the commanders and among my soldiers there are many warm-hearted, straightforward, and good people with whom I can move forward with confidence, knowing that I will always receive their full and sincere support. In just the same way, they can count on me.”
“In every letter I write that I feel well – these are not just words; I really do feel well,” Iosif reassured his wife. “I eat well, and at almost every stop I manage to snatch half an hour to swim in various rivers, streams, and ponds. It may seem paradoxical, but even here, in the immediate vicinity of the front line, we find the time to swim – and do our washing – in a little river that runs nearby.”
“Over the past few days I have expanded my ‘education’ and started riding horseback, which I enjoy very much, despite the natural consequences in the form of chafing in certain soft places and aching knees,” Iosif wrote in his next letter. “In addition, I now have two motor vehicles ‘at my disposal,’ and of course I immediately got behind the wheel, although they are enormous ZIS trucks and physically quite difficult to handle.”
In late August and early September, Soviet forces defending the area around Smolensk launched the Roslavl–Novozybkov offensive operation. It was the Red Army’s first major offensive operation since the beginning of the war with Germany. One of its principal objectives was to defeat the Wehrmacht’s 2nd Panzer Group under the command of Guderian. Iosif was transferred to the headquarters of the engineering troops.
Iosif himself described what happened in the following way: “A car appeared in our forest. A tall major got out and ordered me to follow him to Army headquarters, where I was to be permanently assigned. I am now sitting at Army headquarters, having first covered quite a considerable distance by car along some unbelievable roads. I do not know whether this is for better or worse, but I was genuinely sad to part with the people I had become good friends with during this time, and with the work that had been going quite well for me. Everything is different here, of course. The work seems interesting and is considerably closer to my main profession.”
The 50th Army, commanded by Major General Mikhail Petrov, a Hero of the Soviet Union, was advancing toward Roslavl. However, like other Red Army formations at the time, it failed to achieve any significant success. The offensive planned by the Soviet command had already stalled by mid-September. In early October, the 50th Army was encircled following a deep breakthrough by Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group. Soviet units attempted to break out of the encirclement by constructing a pontoon bridge across the Resseta River. As an engineer and builder, Iosif Dlugach was directly involved in its construction.
For two days, retreating Red Army units crossed the bridge. But the attempt to escape the encirclement ended in tragedy. In October 1941, around 90 percent of the personnel of the 50th Army were killed at the Resseta River. Its commander, Mikhail Petrov, was mortally wounded, and Alexander Zubakin, head of the engineering troops department – the very “tall major” who had brought Iosif to headquarters – was also killed. Senior Lieutenant Iosif Dlugach was declared missing in action.
For many years, the family believed that Iosif had gone missing near Vyazma. Only recently, thanks to his letters, were they able to find the account preserved by Major Zubakin’s relatives and reconstruct the course of events.
The last letter from the front that Lidia received was written on September 20, 1941.
“…There is not a trace of envy in me toward those friends of mine who, for one reason or another, remained where they were and now spend their nights in the metro… To be frank, I could quite easily have stayed in Dzerzhinsk. That was, in fact, what had originally been intended, but out of respect for myself I preferred what I have now, and I believe I was right…
“I miss you and all of you terribly! How I wish I could see you, see how our dear little girl is growing – she will probably soon forget that I even exist!! It will soon be three months since the day I saw you off!!! It is a very painful memory, one that will only be erased when we meet again in Moscow… Write to me, my dear, do not forget me, and do not worry about me. I still believe in my lucky star and hope for the best.”
The “little girl,” Rita, followed in her father’s footsteps when she grew up. After graduating from the Historical and Archival Institute, she went on to complete her studies at the Moscow Architectural Institute (MArchI). A Doctor of Sciences and a leading specialist in Constructivism, Margarita Iosifovna Astafyeva-Dlugach devoted her entire life to architecture. Her only memory of her father was the figure of a rather short man standing against the backdrop of an open window, wearing a snow-white shirt that fluttered in the light breeze.
Author: Lika Dlugach
Translated by Lena Lores
References
Documents from the family archive of Lika Dlugach.
I. A. Kazus. Soviet Architecture of the 1920s: The Organization of Architectural Design. Moscow: Progress-Traditsiya, 2009.
V. E. Khazanova. Soviet Architecture of the First Five-Year Plan. Moscow: Nauka, 1980.
F. D. Pankov. Fiery Frontiers: The Combat History of the 50th Army in the Great Patriotic War. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1984.
Memory of the People: Authentic Documents of the Second World War. pamyat-naroda.ru.
