In 1904, Anderson enrolled at the University of Kazan, and from 1909 continued his studies in Saint Petersburg, where he received a Magister degree from the University of Saint Petersburg in 1911. During his time in Saint Petersburg he also catalogued the folk tales held in the archives of the Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences and the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. For the 1911/1912 winter semester he enrolled at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin, returning to the Kazan to continue his studies in the autumn of 1912. In 1916 he submitted his thesis on the ballad of the Emperor and the Abbot (AT 922) for which he received a Doctorate from the University of Kazan in 1918. He worked at the University of Tartu in Estonia between 1920 and 1939, where in 1920 he was made the first holder of a chair of folklore. Anderson's most significant students at the time were Oskar Loorits and and later Isidor Levin.