Zatonsky was born in the village of Lysets in of Ushitsy (Ushytsia) Uyezd, Podolia Governorate, Russian Empire (now in Kamianets-Podilskyi Raion, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Ukraine) into the family of a volost pysar.

When the Red Army took over Kyiv in 1918 after the January Uprising, Zatonsky recalled that he only narrowly escaped execution as a counterrevolutionary when only Vladimir Lenin's mandate saved his life.

While in that post he did everything in his power to shut down the Kamyanets-Podilsky State University as the concentration of the counter-revolutionary forces of Symon Petliura.

[2] He personally was offered a position by Lenin as a representative of the Soviet Ukrainian People's Republic in the Russian SFSR.

On November 17–30, 1918, Zatonsky, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko and Joseph Stalin became members of the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) of the Special Group of Kursk Troops.

In 1922 he was one of the persons who signed for the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as the representative of the Ukrainian SSR.