while fighting in a Cossack Brigade. Losev's father was Fyodor Petrovich Losev, a violinist and conductor by avocation and a teacher of mathematics and physics by trade. Attracted to a bohemian lifestyle, Losev's father left the family in the hands of his wife, Natalya Alekseyevna Loseva (née Polyakova), who raised Losev as an only child at her father's house.

Losev was schooled in the classics at gymnasium