Pavel Petrovich Bazhov was born in January 1879 in the village of Sysert Factory to a worker named Peter Bazhov. He spent his childhood in Sysert, where he attended the local zemstvo school from 1886 to 1889 and was noticed by the director Alexander Mashukov. Pavel graduated among the best students. In 1890, his family moved to the village of Polevskoy Factory, and he entered the Yekaterinburg Theological School, where he studied until he was 14. In 1899, Bazhov graduated from the Perm Theological Seminary. In 1907 and 1913, he taught the Russian language at the Yekaterinburg Diocesan Women's School and the Theological School in Kamyshlov. During summer vacations, he traveled around the Urals, collecting folklore.

In July 1911, Bazhov married his student Valentina Ivanitskaya in the village of Kashino. They had seven children, three of whom died in infancy.

Until 1917, Bazhov was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and after the February Revolution, he supported the Bolsheviks. In 1918, he joined the RCP(b). During the Civil War, he arrived in Semipalatinsk Province and Ust-Kamenogorsk, where he organized underground activities and developed resistance tactics. After the coup in Ust-Kamenogorsk in June 1918, Bazhov temporarily ceased his activities, but in January 1919, he resumed coordinating the underground. In November 1919, he united partisan groups into one force.

After the establishment of Soviet power in Ust-Kamenogorsk in December 1919, Bazhov came out of hiding and began organizing a new Soviet. In January 1920, regular Red Army forces arrived in the city, and Kozyr's army dispersed. Acting under the pseudonym Bakheev Bakmetyev, Bazhov suppressed preparations for an uprising.

In the new Revolutionary Committee, Bazhov held the position of head of the Department of Education and the Trade Union Bureau. He became the editor of the local newspaper, organized teacher training courses, and schools for literacy. In 1920, he participated in the First District Congress of Soviets and headed the food brigade. In 1921, Bazhov moved to Semipalatinsk, where he headed the provincial trade union bureau.

At the end of 1921, Bazhov returned to the Urals due to illness and denunciations at the Provincial Cheka. He continued his journalistic and literary activities, writing books on the history of the Urals and collecting folklore. In 1924, his first book of essays, "Ural Tales," was published. In 1933, he was expelled from the party due to a denunciation but was later reinstated.

In 1936, the first Ural fairy tale, "The Girl Azovka," was published in the magazine "Krasnaya Nov". In 1939, the first edition of "The Malachite Box" was released, which was repeatedly supplemented with new tales.

From 1940, Bazhov headed the Sverdlovsk Writers' Organization. He passed away on December 3, 1950, in Moscow from lung cancer and was buried in Sverdlovsk at the Ivanovsky Cemetery.