[1][2] A Kharkov University alumnus, Zeeler started his career as a lawyer in Rostov-on-Don where he also worked for the City Duma.
[3] Zeeler became involved in active politics in 1917 when, as a prominent member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, he became the head of its Don and Kuban regional Committee, which led to his being elected a Mayor of Rostov-on-Don.
[4] He took an active part in financing and forming the regular White Army units[5] and, after general Alexey Kaledin's suicide, supported his successor Ataman Anatoly Nazarov, serving for a while (according to Anton Denikin) as "an effective and zealous intermediary between the Volunteer Army on the one hand and the greedy Rostov plutocracy and our enemy, the revolutionary democracy, on the other.
He helped to organize and for thirty years was the secretary of the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in Paris.
[9] A treasurer of the Union of Russian Lawyers in France and (since 1927) a secretary of the central committee of the Days of Russian Culture event, Zeeler toured with lectures, actively contributed to Russkaya Mysl (the Pyotr Struve-revived 1921-1927 version of the originally Moscow-based magazine) and was one of the editors of the book Commemorating the Ones Who Perished (Памяти погибших, 1929), dedicated to the memory of the Constitutional Democratic Party members who were killed in the 1918-1920 Russian Civil War.