Vasily Shulgin, a hereditary nobleman, was born in Kyiv into a family of a historian. He graduated from the Second Kyiv Gymnasium (1895) and the Law Faculty of Kyiv University (1900). He was an MP of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th State Dumas representing the Volyn governorate. Shulgin was a leader of the “right” faction, and then of the moderate party of Russian nationalists, the All-Russian National Union. With the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for the front and was wounded. Since August 1915, he was a leader of the Progressive Bloc of the State Duma, a member of the Special Commission on Defense.

On February 27, 1917, the Council of Elders of the Duma elected Shulgin to the Provisional Committee of the State Duma. On March 2, together with the leader of the Union of October 17 party, Aleksander Guchkov, he went to Pskov to see Emperor Nicholas II and received the document on his abdication.

In the summer–autumn of 1917, Shulgin was engaged in social and political activities in Petrograd and Kyiv, participated in the State conference in Moscow (August).

In November 1917, after the Bolsheviks came to power, he left for Novocherkassk and enrolled in the Alekseyev organization. At the request of General Mikhail Alekseyev, he returned to Kyiv, where he continued his political activities and began recruiting officers. At the same time, Shulgin formed an underground informant network “Azbuka”, which later became a unit within the intelligence structure of the Volunteer Army.

Since July 1918, he collaborated with the National Center. In August, he left for the Don and Kuban, where he joined the Volunteer Army. In the autumn of 1918, together with General Abram Dragomirov, he developed the Regulations for a Special Meeting under the Supreme Leader of the Volunteer Army. Initially, he took part in its work.

In January–March 1919, he was a political adviser to the military governor of Odessa, Aleksey Grishyn-Almazov. After the occupation of Kyiv by the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (AFSR) (August 1919), he resumed his activities there. In the autumn, after a series of defeats of the Whites, he arrived in Odessa, where he tried to organize the defense of the city from the Bolsheviks. He remained in an illegal position. In July 1920, he fled to Crimea and was evacuated together with the troops of Pyotr Wrangel from there. In 1918–1920, he published various newspapers to promote the idea of the White cause and united Russia.

In emigration, Shulgin lived in different European countries, wrote books of memoirs Dni [Days] (Belgrade, 1925) and 1920s (Sofia, 1921). He was a member of the Russian All-Military Union, the National Labour Union of the new generation. In December 1944, he was arrested by Soviet counterintelligence in Yugoslavia and delivered to Moscow. Shulgin was sentenced to 25-year imprisonment for previous counter-revolutionary activities, which he served in the Vladimir prison. In 1956, he was released and lived in Vladimir.