 He became a Bolshevik in 1904, and during the 1905 Revolution he was active in Moscow, Kaluga and the Urals working in underground printshops, being hidden by the All-Russian Union of Railway Workers.From 1908, he was a professional revolutionary, working for the Bolsheviks in Moscow and the Urals.He founded the illegal newspaper "The Kaluga Worker (Калужский рабочий)."