Timasheff "came from an old family of Russian nobility". His father was Minister of Trade and Industry under Nicholas World War II In Saint St. Petersburg, where he was born, he attended a classical high school. He went on to attend the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, the University of Strasbourg, and the Saint St. Petersburg State University (Master of Arts 1910, Doctor of Laws 1914).
At the latter university he met the Polish-Russian jurist Leon Petrazycki, who was a significant influence on him throughout his life. Two years later he began teaching sociological jurisprudence at the University of Petrograd. He emigrated to the United States following an alleged involvement with the Tagantsev Conspiracy in 1920.
He took up a similar position at Fordham University, and was one of the original developers of the discipline of sociology of law.
Buried: Oakland Cemetery (Yonkers, New York) Westchester County, United States of America.
Timasheff was the author of various works, including The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia (New York, 1946), in which he argued that the Bolsheviks made a conscious retreat from socialist values during the 1930s, instead returning to traditional ones like patriotism and the family. Historian Terry Martin considers this a misnomer, because "in the political and economic spheres, the period after 1933 marked a consolidation, rather than a repudiation, of the most important goals of Stalin"s socialist offensive: forced industrialization, collectivization, nationalization, abolition of the market, political dictatorship.".
