Vasily was born in Moscow, the son of Alexandra Antonovna (Baranova) and Petr Kononovich Botkin,[1][2][3] a wealthy tea merchant.

[4][5] Vasily was a moderate liberal in the 1830s and 40s, associating with members of the circle of Nikolai Stankevich, and with the Westernizers, including Mikhail Bakunin, Vissarion Belinsky and Alexander Herzen.

He travelled widely in Europe, meeting well known figures such as Karl Marx, Louis Blanc and Victor Hugo.

[4][5] Vasily was the first Russian publicist to acquaint Russian readers with the works of Friedrich Engels (he wrote a summary of Engels's pamphlet Schelling and Revelation, part of his series German Literature, published in 1843 in the magazine Notes of the Fatherland).

[5] Much of his aesthetic and literary theory can be found in his letters, especially those he wrote to Ivan Turgenev, and in his essay The Poetry of A.