After the early death of his mother in 1859, his father raised him and his three brothers for a life in the priesthood, sending them to the religious school in Shuya, and then to the seminary in Vladimir.

This only lasted a short time as, in 1872, he was appointed a lecturer at the Imperial University of Warsaw, where he presented a dissertation on Tacitus to obtain his habilitation in 1873.

Still, he only a year later was presented with a position at the Moscow State University as a candidate for the Chair of the Latin literature department.

By the following year, he had made a part-time return to the academic world as the Chair of Art History and Theory at Moscow University.

In 1897, Tsvetaev was able to secure the wealthy glassware manufacturer, Yury Nechaev-Maltsov, as the museum's primary sponsor.