Boris Yevseyevich Gusman was a Soviet author, screenwriter, theater director, and columnist for Pravda. As deputy director for the Bolshoi Theatre and later director of the Soviet Radio Committee Arts Division, Gusman played an important role in promoting Sergei Prokofiev's music in the USSR and internationally. Gusman was arrested during the Great Purges of the late 1930s, and died in a labor camp in 1944. His son Israel Borisovich Gusman would later become a prominent musical conductor.