At the outbreak of the October Revolution of 1917, Kozhevnikov became a member of the Communist Party and was soon appointed commissar of the Kharkiv postal and telegraph district.

In August 1918, the Revolutionary Military Council decided to send an expeditionary partisan detachment to the rear of the White Guard troops on the Eastern Front.

The detachment of Kozhevnikov, formed mainly from volunteers of the Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod and Astrakhan postal and telegraph districts, numbered initially some 500 men.

In early December 1918, an order was sent from Moscow to redeploy the Partisan Army through the Bugulma railway station to the Southern Front and concentrate it in the area of Novy Oskol in the Kursk province.

In January 1919, Kozhevnikov detachments numbered more than 30,000 men who fought in the battles for Kupyansk, Starobelsk and Lugansk.