 He supported the Leningrad party leader Grigory Zinoviev against Josif Stalin.At the party congress of December 1925, he complained angrily that there were supporters of the left opposition who dared not declare their allegiance because they did not want to be sent to "Murmansk or Turkestan"..In 1926, he was dismissed from his post, and was later assigned to work in the Soviet embassy in Rome.