He and his brother set up a locksmith business in a village in the Tula region, south of Moscow, with the intention of spread in political ideas among the peasants.

[2] Aleksandr returned to St Petersburg, where he was arrested in November 1874, but released in April, after which he worked in a factory in the Kostroma region.

During 1878, he and a fellow socialist, Mikhail Popov, toured markets in the Voronezh region, making contact with peasants.

When Land And Liberty broke into two factions as the result of an internal dispute over tactics in August 1879, Kvyatkovsky opted to side with the stance taken by the more adventurous People's Will or Narodnaya Volya group.

Yevgenia Figner volunteered to distribute revolutionary literature among students, but out of inexperience, she used the same false name under which she was registered at her address.