Ivan Kataev was born on June 5, 1875, in the Vyatka Province. He studied at the Vyatka Theological Seminary and then enrolled in the Department of History and Philology at Moscow University. After graduation in 1901, he held teaching positions at various institutions and worked in the archives of the Ministry of Justice. He was a member of the Moscow Archaeological Society and the head of the historical department of the pedagogical museum at the Society for the Dissemination of Technical Knowledge. He authored the "Textbook on Russian History for Secondary Schools" (1907), which would have four editions, and published several works on the history of Moscow. In 1916, he sat on the committee in charge of the secondary school reform.

In 1917, Ivan Kataev was appointed director of a boys' gymnasium in Suzdal. From 1918 to 1923, he held a professorship at the Tambov State University and directed the Tambov Branch of the Central Humanitarian Pedagogical Institute. Also, he served as Chairman of the Society for the Study of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Tambov region.

From 1923 to 1924, Ivan Kataev worked at the Voronezh University, and from 1924 to 1930 at the Perm University, where he published a number of works on the teaching methodology for social sciences. In 1930, he joined the Middle Volga Pedagogical Institute, where he worked until 1932. From 1939 to 1941, he was a professor at the Kuibyshev Pedagogical Institute. From 1941 to 1945, Kataev served as director of the Department of History at the Magnitogorsk Pedagogical Institute and Dean of the History Department. In 1944, he defended his doctoral thesis on the evolution of capitalism in Russia at the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Ivan Kataev died on April 26, 1946.