Koozma John Tarasoff was born to John and Anastasia Tarasoff on February 19, 1932, on a farm near the Doukhobor community of Pokrovka, Saskatchewan. Tarasoff's paternal grandfather Koozma participated in the historic Doukhobor "burning of firearms" in Tsarist Russia on June 29, 1895, joining the large migration of Doukhobors to Canada in 1899. His son, John, was born in Canada, and worked as first as a farmer and later as a carpenter after moving his family to Saskatoon in 1943. Anastasia, from the village of Slavanka, Azerbaidjan immigrated to Saskatchewan in 1926 and shortly after married John Tarasoff. The Tarasoffs had two sons: John (b.1928), and Koozma. As youngsters in Pokrovka, both children spoke Russian as their first language.
Interested in baseball in his youth, Tarasoff travelled to the Ozark Baseball Camp in 1952, where he was befriended by Tyrus (Ty) Cobb. Tarasoff and Cobb corresponded regularly for about three years, and Cobb arranged a professional try-out for Tarasoff.
While pursuing his studies, Tarasoff held an active role in certain Doukhobor cultural and student organizations. From 1953-1958, he was editor and publisher of a monthly, English-language Doukhobor publication, The Doukhobor Inquirer (which became The Inquirer in c. 1956.) The Inquirer was the official publication of the Union of Young Doukhobors, Saskatoon.
Tarasoff matriculated from the Saskatoon Technical Collegiate Institute in 1952. He received his Bachelor of Arts in English, Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon (1957), his Master of Arts in Anthropology and Sociology from the University of British Columbia (1963) and completed course work for a doctorate in Sociology at Carleton University (1974-1976).
For a period of sixteen years beginning in 1963, Tarasoff worked for various departments within the Government of Canada and the Government of Saskatchewan. He was a Socio-Economic Research Officer for the Saskatchewan Department of Welfare in Regina (1963-1967), while also doing free-lance contract work for the National Museum of Canada on various ethnological topics. He was employed as a Senior Human Resources Studies Coordinator for the Canada Department of Forestry and Rural Development, Western Region (1967-1969) and was a Senior Socio-Economic Research Officer for the Canada Department of Regional Economic Expansion (DREE), (1970-1976). From 1976-1979, Tarasoff was Senior Socio-Economic Research Project Manager for the Canadian Council on Rural Development.
Since 1980, Tarasoff has worked extensively as a consultant, writer, lecturer, photojournalist, conference organizer and advisor on multiculturalism and cross-cultural and international exchange. He has written books and reports on a wide variety of topics, including rural development, cross-cultural communications, multiculturalism, Canadian Indians, community studies, peace and disarmament, Soviet-West relations, museum curatorship, behavioural change, and the Doukhobors.
Tarasoff's most recent work, Spirit Wrestlers: Doukhobor Pioneers' Strategies for Living was published in 2002. Koozma Tarasoff currently (2005) resides in Ottawa, Ontario.