 Returning to Samara, he became assistant chair of the Executive Committee of the Samara Provincial Soviet (Gubispolkom) and was named a military commissar.During the civil war he organized Red Guard detachments and commanded a unit on the Orenburg front.While continuing to write and publish a large number of poems (in a wide-variety of newspapers, magazines, and collections) during the years from 1918 to the mid-1930s, Gerasimov also became one of the leaders of the proletarian culture movement (Proletkult).