Posse grew up in Saint Petersburg the youngest of six children; his brother Konstantin (1847–1928) was a mathematician who wrote a calculus textbook widely used in Russia.
[2] In early 1899 he took over as editor of Zhizn (Life), previously a moderate populist magazine, in an attempt to merge populism and Legal Marxism.
[6] Between May 15 and December 12, 1902 (Gregorian calendar), Posse also edited and published (as "F. Rosin") twelve issues of a companion magazine, Listki Zhizni (Leaflets of Life), which he called a "non-factional Social-Democratic organ", in London [7].
[9] In 1905 the Odessa publisher Burevestnik issued his translation of August Bebel's Die Frau und der Sozialismus (Woman and Socialism).
Posse returned to Russia after the Revolution of 1905 and continued working as an editor, apparently rejecting young Isaac Babel's early stories.
1864-1894 (Meditations about the Past: Youth, 1864–1894), in 1933, which was privately criticized by his one time friend and protégé Gorky for its supposed multiple omissions and inaccuracies.