Pyotr Gusev

Pyotr Ivanovich Gusev (August 1, 1932 – October 1, 2024) was a Soviet and Russian career soldier. During the mid-1980s, Gusev was a lieutenant general serving as deputy commander of the Carpathian Military District.

Gusev was subsequently appointed head of the Soviet military mission in Angola in 1987, succeeding Lieutenant General Leonid Kuzmenko. He was the senior Soviet general officer involved in Operation Saluting October, and the resulting Battle of Cuito Cuanavale.

Although held in extremely high regard by his Angolan counterparts, He often vetoed commendations for Soviet enlisted personnel and junior officers who had been directly engaged in hostilities.

Gusev published his memoirs after his retirement from military service.

For a number of years, Gusev was consistently misidentified in the South African and Western press as Lieutenant General "Konstantin Shaganovich" for unknown reasons. Gusev's command decisions in Angola were frequently attributed to "Shaganovich", but according to South African historians Willem Steenkamp and Helmoed-Römer Heitman, as well as Russian historian Vladimir Shubin, no such individual ever served with the Soviet military mission in Angola. Where and how the original misidentification occurred remains a mystery.