His father, a German Russian, was a collective farm chairman and received the Hero of Socialist Labour award.

He participated in the Great Patriotic War and earned two medals for courage; he was demobilized in 1947 with the rank of junior lieutenant.

At the same university, he wrote a thesis for the degree of candidate of legal sciences on the topic "Conflicts between convicts accompanied by violent assaults (based on materials from high security penal colonies)".

From 1995 to 1997, Uss was Deputy Governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, under Valery Zubov, and supervised public order and legal issues.

On 7 December 1997, Uss was elected a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Krasnoyarsk Krai from the electoral bloc "Union of Business and Order - the Future of the Territory".

In December 2001, he resigned as a member of the Federation Council in accordance with the law on the new procedure for forming the upper house of the Russian parliament.

In the second round of elections he won 42% of the votes, but lost to the Governor of the Taymyr Autonomous Okrug Aleksandr Khloponin, with more than 48%.

On 29 September 2017, by a decree of the President of Russia, Uss was appointed as the acting Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Krai.

On 9 October 2022 the United States Department of Justice charged five Russians and two oil traders from Venezuela with evading sanctions and money laundering.

Hemp owns Tsentralnoye LLC (a company in Krasnoyarsk; lease and management of non-residential real estate).