Mordovtsev spent his childhood in Don Host Oblast, where he learned in school.

[2] His novella New Russian People (1868) dealt with the Narodniks and their cause, and with the position of raznochintsy intellectuals, as did the novel Signs of the Times (1869), although Mordovets did not share the views of the Narodniks.

[1] His historical novels were widely read;[2] (The False Dmitry, 1879; Tsar Peter and the Regent Sophia, 1885; The Tsar and the Hetman, 1880; Lord Novgorod the Great, 1882; For Whose Sins?, 1890); these novels demonstrated Mordovets's democratic leanings.

He contributed to several popular journals, including Russian Word, Notes of the Fatherland, and Affairs.

[1] Mordovets also published many historical works, such as Impostors and the Freemen of the Lower Reaches (1867), The Haidamak Uprising (1870), Political Movements of the Russian People (2 vols, 1871), and On the Eve of Freedom (1872, published 1889), and his memoirs, From My Past and Experiences (1902, written in Ukrainian), in which he tells of his meetings with Taras Shevchenko and Nikolay Chernyshevsky.