V. N. Pertsev was born in Kursk in a family of Nikolay Nikonorovich Pertsev, State Counsellor.
He graduated from a Realschule in 1895 and continued his studies at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology and then in the Warsaw Veterinary Institute. But technical and natural sciences did not attract him. The choice was made in favor of liberal arts education. In 1897 he entered the Historical- Philological Faculty of the Moscow University. He was twice expelled from it for participating in student unrest. So he was forced to continue his studies abroad (in Vienna and Berlin). Nevertheless he graduated from the Moscow University in 1903 and began to work in secondary schools. In 1907 he successfully defended his PhD thesis on the German Enlightenment philosopher J. Herder. In 1908 V. N. Pertsev published «Essays on World History. Modern Time» (coauthored with E. A. Yefimova). The book was republished for two times – in 1912 and 1918. In the same year of 1908 V. N. Pertsev translated from German «Origin and Development of Christian Afterlife Beliefs» by R. Knopf. The book was published as part of the series «Religion and the Church in the light of scientific thought and free criticism», published at N. M. Nikolsky’s initiative.
When the World War I began, he drew attention to the aggressive nature of German militarism and wrote a lot of articles about it. After the October Revolution all these articles were collected in one book «Hohenzollerns».
In 1918 V. N. Pertsev was elected as a professor of the Smolensk University, which was founded this year. In 1921 Professor V. N. Pertsev was invited to the Belarusian State University. He worked as a Professor of the General History Department. Ten years later he began to work at the Minsk Pedagogical Institute as a chair of the West History Department.
During this period the scientific interests of Professor V. N. Pertsev were focused on socio-economic history of European countries. As a result his book «The Economic Development in England in XIX cent.» was published.
In 1934 the Faculty of History was organized in the BSU and Professor V. N. Pertsev was invited to work there. He s tarted to teach the course on Medieval History.
In 1935 V. N. Pertsev was awarded degree of Doctor of Science in History. In 1940 he was elected an Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR. After the beginning of the Great Patriotic War V. N. Pertsev was evacuated, first to Kursk, then to Sarapul and, finally, to Izhevsk. There he worked as a professor and chair of the Department of History at the Udmurt Pedagogical Institute. In 1943 he returned to work at the BSU (at Skhodnya). In 1944 Academician V. N. Pertsev returned to Minsk to continue research activities in the BSU and the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR.
In 1945 Professor V. N. Pertsev was among the members of the BSSR delegation to sign the UN Charter.
In 1955 the departments of Ancient History and of Medieval History had been merged and Professor V. N. Pertsev became the Head of the united Department. At the same time he worked in the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR. He studied the development of the Belarusian historiography from all the antiquity to XX cent.
In 1959 scientists were forbidden to combine full time work at the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR and in the BSU. Professor V. N. Pertsev faced the choice between the posts of the Secretary-Academician of the Department of Social Sciences at the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR and the Head of the Ancient and Medieval History Department of the BSU. Professor V. N. Pertsev chose the BSU. The main scientific work by Professor V. N. Pertsev as Medievalist was devoted to the history of ancient Prussia. Several major articles devoted to this issue were published to form the basis for a future book. However, monograph was never published. The reason was a negative review from Moscow that pointed out that V. N. Pertsev lacked command of Marxist methodology.