His grandfather, Lieutenant-General Jovan Šević, led Serb colonists from the Habsburg Monarchy to Imperial Russia during the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna.

His father Georgije was the son of Jovan Šević who led the migration of Serbs from the Habsburg Monarchy Military Frontier to Russia.

There Ivan spent most of his childhood in Novorossiya, the new name given by Catherine the Great to the territories gained from the Tartars and Turks and settled by Serbs and other co-religionists, Slavs and Vlachs.

In 1773, he participated in a campaign in the Crimea, and the following year, in the suppression of a peasant uprising led by Yemelyan Pugachev, where he stood up to this baptism of fire.

[2] As a cavalry officer, he fought the Mountaineers in the Kuban, then against the Ottoman Turks in 1788 at Ochakov, Căuşeni, and Bender (during the "Second Catherine's Turkish War").