[2] After the October Revolution, he served on several Soviet committees for agrarian reform and was a member of Narkomzem as well as "holding lecturing and administrative posts at several universities and academies.

In 1930 Chayanov was arrested in the Case of the Labour Peasant Party [ru] (Трудовая крестьянская партия), fabricated by the NKVD.

[citation needed] In 1937, Chayanov was arrested again and was shot after his name appeared on an execution list signed by Stalin and Molotov.

Chayanov's major works, Peasant Farm Organisation (originally published in Russian in 1925) and On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems were first translated into English in 1966.

His book Puteshestvie moego brata Alekseia v stranu krest’ianskoi utopii [My brother Alexei's journey into the land of peasant utopia] (Moskva: Gosizdat, 1920) predicted a rapid transfer of power into peasant hands; its hero wakes up in 1984, "in a country where the village has conquered the city, where handicraft cooperatives have replaced industry."

[5] Between 1918 and 1928 he also wrote five Gothic stories which he published at his own expense under the pseudonyms Anthropologist A, Phytopathologist U, and Botanist Kh (Russian: Ботаник Х), with illustrations by his friends; three of them have been translated into English.

Agricultural sociologists, anthropologists and ethnologists working in developing countries, where the peasant economy remains a predominant factor, apply his theory to help understand the nature of the family labour farm.