Mikhail Ivanovich Safonov was born into nobility on 13 November 1893 in Ostrogozhsk, the Russian Empire. He was a Russian Orthodox adherent. As a child, he was educated in the Ostrogozhsk Gymnasium. He entered Saint Peterburg's Imperial Russian Naval Academy on 20 September 1909. He would serve on half a dozen ships while training. On 21 February 1913, he received a Bronze Medal marking 300 years rule by the House of Romanov; in April 1913, he received another Bronze Medal commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the Fatherland War.