Background
He was born in 1900 in Velizh, Vitebsk Governorate (now in Smolensk Oblast).
He was born in 1900 in Velizh, Vitebsk Governorate (now in Smolensk Oblast).
He was of Belarusian ethnicity. Gorev had combat experience in the Russian Civil War (1918-1921) and had then an advisor in China (known under aliases "Nikitin" and "Gordon") to accelerate sovietization during the Chinese Civil War. Gorev joined the Spanish Republican front in late August 1936 as military attache under the alias "Sancho." Upon his return to the Soviet Union, he was arrested during the Great Purge by the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs on 25 January 1938, sentenced to death on 20 June 1938 and shot the same day.
He was posthumously rehabilitated in October 1956.