Mirsky was a founding member of the Eurasianist movement and the chief editor of the periodical Eurasia, his own views gradually evolving toward Marxism.

In 1931, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and asked Maxim Gorky if he could procure his pardon by Soviet authorities.

Mirsky's arrest may have been caused by a chance meeting with his friend the British historian E. H. Carr who was visiting the Soviet Union in 1937.

[6] In April 1937, he was denounced in the journal Literaturnaya Gazeta as a "filthy Wrangelist and White Guard officer".

Although his magnum opus was eventually published in Russia, Mirsky's reputation in his native country remains sparse.

Korney Chukovsky gives a lively portrait of Mirsky in his diary entry for 27 January 1935: I liked him enormously: the vast erudition, the sincerity, the literary talent, the ludicrous beard and ludicrous bald spot, the suit which, though made in England, hung loosely on him, shabby and threadbare, the way he had of coming out with a sympathetic ee-ee-ee (like a guttural piglet squeal) after each sentence you uttered—it was all so amusing and endearing.

"[9] George Orwell was highly critical of The Intelligentsia of Great Britain[10] but Tariq Ali had a more favourable assessment of this book.