Nazarbekian supported Portukalian's idea of creating an Armenian organization to engage in revolutionary struggle in the Ottoman Empire.

While in Paris, he met Mariam Vardanian (later known as Maro Nazarbek), a fellow student who had been a part of a revolutionary circle in Saint Petersburg; they were soon engaged.

There, they met a number of Russian Armenian students, with whom they discussed the situation in Ottoman Armenia and the need for a revolutionary organization.

In 1887, Nazarbekian, Mariam Vardanian and their Russian-Armenian comrades Gevorg Gharajian, Kristapor Ohanian, Ruben Khan-Azat and Gabriel Kafian founded the Hunchakian party and the Hunchak ('Bell') newspaper in Geneva.

[1][3] In the following years, the Hunchakian party carried out revolutionary actions in the Ottoman Empire with the goal of causing a European intervention on behalf of the Armenians.

Their activities often provoked brutal reprisals by the Ottoman authorities against Armenians and largely failed to bring about the desired European intervention or reforms.

[1] Nazarbekian began a book series called Socialist Library (Sots’ialistakan gradaran), in which he published several works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Ferdinand Lassalle, Paul Lafargue and Plekhanov in Armenian translation.

He personally knew Engels and Lafargue, as well as other prominent socialists such as Jean Jaurès, Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin and Jules Guesde.