Rusanov's widowed mother struggled to bring up the family but managed to send her son to the Oryol Gymnasium (Grammar School).

Sent into internal exile in Siberia, Rusanov became a statistician for the local council in Ust Syslosk (renamed Syktyvkar in 1930), where he conducted scientific observations in addition to his duties.

At the end of his term he was not allowed to reside in any major Russian city, depriving him of a chance to further his education, he therefore went to study in Paris at the Sorbonne.

[1] He sailed from Aleksandrovsk-na-Murmane (now Polyarnyy, near Murmansk) on 26 June on ship Gerkules under Captain Alexander Kuchin, Roald Amundsen's South Pole navigator.

At the end of a very successful summer's field work, three members of the expedition (the geologist, the zoologist and the ship's bosun) returned to Russia via Grønfjorden in Norway.

[2] The remaining ten, however, without consultation with the authorities in St. Petersburg, set off with Rusanov in an incredibly rash attempt at reaching the Pacific Ocean via the Northern Sea Route.

In it, Rusanov indicated that he intended rounding the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya and heading east across the Kara Sea but nothing was heard from the Gerkules thereafter.