His range of works included portraits, landscapes, realistic compositions, Russian epics, Slavic and Teutonic mythology, and battle paintings.

Vasilyev popularized legendary characters of the Russian folk art, songs and fairy tales: Ilya Muromets, Mikula Selyaninovich, Svyatogor, Dunay Ivanovich [ru], Dobrynya Nikitich, Volga Svyatoslavich and others.

Among the illustrations for the book Dezionization by anti-Semitic author Valery Yemelyanov, one of the founders of Russian neopaganism, there were reproductions of Vasilyev's paintings on the theme of the struggle of Russian heroes with evil forces, in particular, a painting signed in this publication as Ilya Muromets defeats the Christian plague.

Vasilyev's oeuvres steadily gained in popularity through the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods, until they have reached a virtually iconic status among Russian nationalists, neo-pagans, and fantasy geeks.

The minor planet 3930 Vasilev, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1982 is named after him.