As a Royal Dignitary of Russia, he was one of the leading committee members which governed foreign affairs with an emphasis on Far Eastern issues at the beginning of the 20th century.
[5] The policies that he and his fellow committee members pursued played a significant role in causing the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.
After education at the Naval Cadet Corps, Abaza entered the Imperial Russian Navy on 1 May 1873 as a Junker in the Baltic Fleet, in which he made a training cruise in the Gulf of Finland aboard the armored frigate Sevastopol.
After completing the voyage aboard Bayan, Abaza became flag lieutenant to the commander of the Pacific Ocean Squadron in the Russian Far East, Admiral Avraamy Aslanbegov.
Abaza traveled to Elbing in the German Empire in 1886 to organize the transfer of three torpedo boats there to the Black Sea Fleet.
He then was assigned to accompany the managing director of the Ministry of the Navy, Vice Admiral Ivan Shestakov, on a trip to the ports of eastern Siberia.
[6] On 10 November 1902 he became the Assistant Chief of the Ministry of Merchant Shipping and Ports and served as commander of the training detachment of the Naval Cadet Corps.
Along with his cousin, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Bezobrazov,[7] who was a state secretary, he had a great influence on diplomatic work with Japan, actually pushing aside the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
[9] The Russian government official and politician Vladimir Gurko, a contemporary of Abaza, described him as follows: Being a seaman by service, he accidentally fell in with the heads of Russian foreign policy, and boldly took upon himself the resolution of extremely complex and delicate international issues, without the slightest preparation for that, relying only on the possibility of direct relations with [Tsar Nicholas II at] Tsarskoye Selo ...Abaza died either in 1915 or on 3 February 1917.