Pugach Isai Markovich is one of the founders of ours university. He was the director of Donetsk mining technical secondary school who has given in 1921 the beginning to our university.
I.М. Pugach was born in 1895 in Chernigov in family housepainter and seanstress, in
which seven children were brought up. In the age of thirteen years he has lost
his father and has left in Gorlovka, started to work on mine as the timberman. In 1913 Isai Markovich has finished the
mining technical secondary school with a rank of the foreman miner. Also he has finished in 1917-1918 years the highest
engineering courses. So mining became his lifelong trade.
In 1920 I.М. Pugach worked as the assistant to the main engineer of Usovka-Makeevka coal area. Isai Markovich has supported the offer of city authorities on creation of mining technical secondary school for preparation in the
shortest terms of engineers of a narrow profile in Usovka. It was entrusted to I.M. Pugach to head the organization of the institute of higher education first in Donbass.
The organization of educational process began literally on an empty place.
I.M. Pugach and his learners visited tumbledown factories and
mines. They found and dug out suitable machine tools and machines, boilers and pipes, tools from under slag. All these things loaded on carts, after that they harnessed oneself, because transport at that time has been completely mobilized for needs of Red Army.
The city then suffered from a dirty and epidemics. Soon director of a Donetsk mining technical secondary school has offered city authorities the unusual project: with the help of students to lay a waterpipe and to stretch a tram line. Also gasification later began. Besides that I.M. Pugach planned the money earned by students to spend for purchase of the literature, visual educational supplies and introduce proper order in hostels. City dwellers have joined students later. They together dug trenches for a pipes laying, stretched a line of the first tram, repaired cars. These works were carried out under the direct leadership and under the projects of I.M. Pugach, A.M. Pervushin, A.I. Tulparov, I.E. Korobchansky and
student S.I. Evstratov.
I.M. Pugach attached great importance to practice in the organization of educational process of the future engineers. He wrote: " All process of training passes in workshops, on mine, in laboratories, technical studies, museums. Here students study special subjects on bright examples: mathematics, chemistry, physics, natural sciences etc. Any word without an illustration, any word without experience..."
He understood, how it is important to be able to use foremost methods of work. Therefore he considered, that any novelty or achievements of science and engineering should be used at our enterprises.
In 1926 the mining technical secondary school became the Donetsk mining
institute and I.M. Pugach became its rector. He held this post within the next five years and much has made for development of institute. Then he was nominated by the assistant of the chief of the Moscow Metrostroi (the organization concerned with the building of underground railways). Here he has offered the civil-engineering design of the first line of underground where the special attention was given drainage of quicksands. This method is applied till now.
In wartime and post-war years Isai Markovich was the leader of main personnel administrations and administrations of educational institutions of the Ministry coal and the heavy industry of the USSR.
I.M. Pugach's proceedings and textbooks - "Mining" and "Mine-rescue trade" have received wide popularity. He was also the talented inventor and the designer, participated in designing the coal combines first in the country.
On materials of the newspaper "Донецкий политехник"