Gusev (Russian: Гу́сев; German: Gumbinnen;[5] Lithuanian: Gumbinė; Polish: Gąbin) is a town and the administrative center of Gusevsky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Pissa and Krasnaya Rivers, near the border with Poland and Lithuania, east of Chernyakhovsk.
[9] The first filial church of the Salzburg Protestants was erected between 1752 and 1752, and was rebuilt in 1840 in a Neoclassical style according to plans designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
In 1860 the Prussian State railway line from Königsberg to Stallupönen (now Nesterov) was built and the route passed through Gumbinnen, causing the town to grow in economic importance in the region.
By the end of the 19th century, Gumbinnen had a foundry, a machine shop, a furniture factory, a clothing mill, two sawmills, several brickworks, and a dairy.
Near the end of World War II, in 1944, the first of Gumbinnen's 24,000 residents began to flee from the advancing Red Army, and a Soviet air attack on 16 October 1944, caused heavy damage to the inner town area.
[3] Gusev lies on the double-track, broad-gauge rail line connecting the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave through Lithuania and Belarus with the main contiguous territory of Russia.