 In 1900 he was arrested for his political activities and for organizing a strike in his workshop, and exiled for three years to Viatka province, near the Ural mountains.At the end of his exile in 1903, he was again arrested, this time for propaganda among the local peasantry and for organizing a socialist circle, for which he was exiled for five years to the Siberian north (Arkhangelsk province), though he was freed in the 1905 amnesty.Returning to work in the Kharkov railway workshops, he joined the local Menshevik organization and, in 1906, was a member of the Menshevik delegation to the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the RSDRP in Stockholm.