Martos was born in Gradizhsk, in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, into a noble family of the Ossorya coat of arms.

Martos graduated from Lubny Classic gymnasium in 1897 and enrolled into the Mathematics Department of the Imperial Kharkov University.

After graduating and until 1917 Martos worked in several different places: a co-ed in Volhynia, a financial director at the Black Sea-Kuban Railway board, a director of the Kuban Cooperative Bank, and a cooperative instructor for the Poltava Governorate zemstvo (1913–1917).

During that time Martos was heading the Central Ukrainian Cooperative Committee as its executive director as well working at the board of directors for the Dniprosoyuz, giving lectures at the Kyiv Commercial Institute, and had established the Kyiv Cooperative Institute.

In 1920 Martos emigrated to Czechoslovakia, where he used to teach in the Ukrainian management Academy in Prague.