Born on January 8, 1885 in Narym, Tomsk province, in the family of Nikolai Pepelyaev, a general of the tsarist army. Victor graduated from Tomsk men's gymnasium. He entered the law faculty of Tomsk University, which he graduated in 1909. In 1909 he taught history at Biysk Gymnasium. In 1912 he was elected as an elector, and on October 20, 1912 at the provincial election meeting of the Tomsk province - as a deputy of the State Duma from the cadet party. On January 15, 1914, at the First Teacher's Congress in St. Petersburg, he proposed to provide Siberian foreigners with free primary education. By this he set Russian nationalists against himself. During the World War I, Pepelyaev, along with another Siberian deputy S. A. Taskin, worked at the front at the head of the 3rd Siberian sanitary detachment.
During the February Revolution, on February 28, he was appointed commissar to the Petrograd city government. On March 2, the Provisional Government issued order No. 169 “with instructions to State Duma member V. N. Pepelyaev to be the port commander of Kronstadt and the commissar of the Provisional Government." During the Lavr Kornilov uprising, Viktor took his side and volunteered for the 8th Siberian mortar division.
After the October Revolution until the spring of 1918 he remained in Petrograd, taking part in the underground struggle against the Bolsheviks. In the spring of 1918 he became a member of the Moscow department of the National Center organization. On instructions from the "National Center" and the Central Committee of the Cadet Party, Pepelyaev went to Siberia in August 1918. On November 9, 1918, he was elected in Omsk the chairman of the Eastern Department of the Cadet Central Committee. On November 15, 1918, at a cadet party conference, he called for the establishment of a military dictatorship. He was one of the participants in the events in Omsk on November 18, 1918, which brought Admiral Alexander Kolchak to power. He became director of the police department of the Kolchak government. In December 1918 he left the cadet party. In May 1919 he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. November 22, 1919 Pepeliaev was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers. He was the only politician loyal to the admiral and, together with the Supreme Ruler, was transferred to the Czechoslovak command to the Irkutsk Political Center. On February 7, 1920, at 5 am, by decree No. 27 of the Irkutsk Military Revolutionary Committee, Pepelyaev was executed along with Kolchak at the mouth of the Ushakovka River.
