Postwar, Gusev successively served as commander of several armies, military attaché to Czechoslovakia, and as head of a directorate of the General Staff before his death in 1962.

During World War I, he was mobilized for service in the Imperial Russian Army on 22 May 1916 and sent to the 9th Reserve Cavalry Regiment in Petrograd.

[1] During the Russian Civil War, Gusev was mobilized by the Novotorzhsky Uyezd military commissariat of the Red Army on 16 October, serving as a junior commander with the 7th Cavalry Regiment in Rzhev.

From March 1919 he served as a starshina with the 1st Northern Cavalry Regiment, fighting on the Eastern Front against the White forces of Alexander Kolchak.

From November 1937 he was secretary of a party bureau, and from September 1939 he was acting military commissar of the Red Army General Staff.

[1][2] After the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Gusev was tasked with the formation of the 25th Cavalry Division in July.

The formation of the division was completed by 25 July and on 2 August it concentrated in the area of Demyansk and Molvotitsy, joining the 34th Army of the Northwestern Front.

Despite making a deep advance into the German rear, the corps' attack and that of other units involved was contained.

During the latter, it captured Kovel, crossed the Western Bug and at the end of the month reached the Vistula in the Warsaw area.