Victor Chernov was born into a family of an official in Khvalynsk, Saratov governorate. He graduated from the Derpt gymnasium (1892), studied at the Law Faculty of Moscow University (he did not graduate). Chernov participated in the student movement. In 1894, he was arrested for participation in illegal activities. In 1895–1899, he lived in exile in Tambov, where he conducted revolutionary populist agitation among the peasants. In 1899–1905, Chernov was in emigration. He was a member of the Agrarian-Socialist League formed in 1900, which merged with the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SPR) in 1902. Chernov was a Member of the Central Committee of the party, its leading theoretician and author of the program adopted at the 1st Congress of the SRP (December 1905 – January 1906). He advocated the use of terror in the fight against autocracy. In 1908–1917, he was in emigration.

During World War I, he was an internationalist. After the February Revolution, he returned to Russia (April 1917). He was a member of the Executive Committee, Deputy Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, a member of the Petrograd and Central Committees of the SRP. In May–August 1917, Chernov held the post of Minister of Agriculture of the Provisional Government. Due to contradictions with Aleksander Kerensky and disappointment with the government coalition with the bourgeois parties, he resigned during General Lavr Kornilov affair. In September–October, he was a supporter of a homogeneous socialist government.

His attitude to the October coup of 1917 was highly negative, he tried to raise the troops of the Western Front against the Bolsheviks. Chernov wanted to organize a socialist government without the Bolsheviks. On January 5, 1918, he was elected Chairman of the Constituent Assembly and went underground after its dissolution. In May, he left Petrograd, and the late September of 1918 saw him arrive in Samara. He criticized the Provisional All-Russian Government (Ufa Directorate).

After the Kolchak coup in Omsk (November 1918), he took part in an attempt to convene the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly in Yekaterinburg and declare a struggle against the power of Aleksander Kolchak. Chernov was arrested, sent to Chelyabinsk, and later released thanks to the intercession of Czech legionnaires. He moved to Ufa. After its occupation by Kolchak’s forces, he went underground and moved to Soviet Russia. During the legalization of the SRP in March 1919, he continued to criticize the policies of the Bolsheviks.

After a new wave of arrests in September 1920, he went abroad. He lived in Western Europe and the United States, participated in the activities of émigré organizations and groups of Socialist Revolutionaries. He was the author of memoirs about the Russian revolution. Chernov died in New York.