Born Pavel Ivanovich Lebedev in Melenki, Vladimir Oblast he became active in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902.

He joined the Bolsheviks in August 1917 and after the October Revolution he participated in the liquidation of the Holy Synod and the Academic Council which were under the Ministry of Public Education.

From 1918 to 1920, he was chairman of the All-Russian Council of Proletkult during which time he edited Proletarskaya Kul'tura with Fedor Kalinin.

From 1937 until his death in 1948, Lebedev-Polianskii was the director of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Academy of Sciences.

He led campaigns to erase non-Marxist literary studies and linguistics in the USSR and to establish the principle of partisanship in Soviet science and ideology.