From the age of ten Kessel trained at the Poltava Military Academy in Russia to serve as cavalry officer, and later joined the Red Army campaign against the Poles during the Polish–Soviet War (1919–21).
Whilst bidding his family farewell as they moved to Russia from Ukraine, he was arrested by Polish guards but escaped to Romania where he was again detained but released.
Kessel emigrated to the US via Romania in 1923 (naturalized 1929) to New York City and worked at part-time jobs in the fur industry[6] and for Russian-language newspapers.
In the post-war years, Kessel worked mostly for Life at their Paris bureau,[8] travelling to cover stories on ideological struggles and territorial disputes in Hungary, China, Palestine, India, Spain, Ceylon and Japan.
[9] In 1950, assigned to the Aga Khan's wedding, he and journalist Dita Comacho documented growing tension between Iran and the Soviet Union, and after extending their stay to six weeks produced an eight-page cover story in Life.