His mother was the daughter of the Narodnaya Volya member August Johann Goldschmidt (of German Baltic descent); his father was the son of former serfs.

During the October Revolution he was a member of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee and commanded Bolshevik detachments.

On September 18 of the same year, in Spassk, Kazan Provence, his mother, Maria Avgustovna Vertynskaya, who was a Socialist-Revolutionary, was shot by the White Czechoslovak Corps.

In 1935 he acted as an interpreter at a meeting between Romain Rolland and Joseph Stalin during a visit to the USSR by the writer.

[4] Arosev was arrested during the height of the Great Purge on 3 July 1937 after he went to see Nikolai Yezhov, whom he knew since the Civil War.

Arosev wrote multiple letters to his old friend Vyacheslav Molotov during this period pleading for him to intervene in his trial, however he never got any response.

[6] Arosev was considered to be one of the most prominent proletarian writers in the RSFSR and many of his works were published widely in magazines until his arrest.

His oldest daughter, Natalia Aroseva (1919–1990) was one of the leading translators of the USSR of the Czech language, the author of the novel Footprint on the Earth, which was dedicated to her father.

In her latest book, "Who Lived Twice," released shortly before her death, actress Olga Aroseva published her father's diaries.