His father, a son of the composer and conductor Vicenzo Albertini, was of Italian and Polish descent, his mother (née Korkunova) was Russian.

A staunch Anglophile who considered Great Britain a perfect model for Russia's political and economic development, Albertini was harshly criticised by radicals like Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Dmitry Pisarev, whom he habitually defended in his polemics with the conservative press.

A moderate liberal, Albertini was deeply interested in the revolutionary movement and maintained strong links with Russian radicals abroad.

In 1862 in London he had talks with Alexander Hertzen and regularly corresponded with Nikolai Ogaryov, who insisted that he'd 'make peace' with his Russian critics (as well as Mikhail Bakunin) 'in the name of our common cause'.

[1] In 1866 Albertini was arrested among the group of authors involved in the (Hertzen-related) so-called 'Heidelberg Reading-room Case'[2] and was deported, without trial, to the Archangelsk region.