Being a student he participated, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, in the creation of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class and its activities.

He supervised the technical preparation of the publication of the newspaper Rabocheye Delo.

He also took part in the hectography of Lenin's 1894 work What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats.

[1] In the late summer of 1899 he signed A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats, directed against the so-called "economists".

He died shortly after, in September, from tuberculosis, which he contracted during solitary confinement in prison, prior to his banishment.