Pravda and art criticism As a young man Gusman was a violinist and played for the
St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra of the
Sheremetev family. Prior to the
Russian Revolution and during the First World War, Gusman associated with intellectuals and critics around the
Enchanted Wanderer magazine, including Dimitri Kruchkov and Victor Khovin, both members of the
Ego-Futurist movement. In 1917 he moved to
Nizhny Novgorod to marry the daughter of a merchant, who soon gave birth to their son,
Israel Gusman. It was in 1921 that Gusman and his family moved to Moscow, where he began writing for
Pravda. Gusman responded favorably to candid films pioneered by Dziga Vertov called
Kino-Pravda. He described them as "lively… striking… and interesting," but criticized the lack of connection between scenes and the absence of unifying themes. Gusman remained with the Bolshoi Theatre through 1930, and in 1933 became head of the arts division of the Soviet Central Radio Administration. Following the success of the film, in 1934 Gusman organized a broadcast concert of the music with
Moscow Radio Orchestra. Gusman also commissioned Prokofiev to write a
Collective Farm Suite, a
Dance Suite, and a suite from the music for
Egyptian Nights. and was assigned a smaller post at a
Tchaikovsky museum in
Klin. Arrested in one of
a series of purges targeting Soviet artists and cultural leaders in 1937–38, Gusman was accused of having written ideologically unsound scripts in the past. While initial purges targeted those linked (or accused of links) to
Trotskyism, Gusman's arrest came alongside later, wider purges. Gusman's son Israel survived the purges, and would go on to head the Gorky Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra from 1957 until 1987. ==Filmography==