Born into the Russian nobility, Nikolai Avksentiev attended school in Penza, studied at the Law Faculty of Moscow University (in 1899 he was expelled due to student unrest).

He was the leader of the right-wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries, a supporter of legal forms of struggle with the imperialist regime and opposed to the terrorist tactics of the Left SRs.

[2] After the February Revolution, Avksentiev emerged as a leading figure among the majority faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party who supported the Provisional Government.

Manukhin wrote in his memoirs, Avksentiev was released from the Krestov hospital thanks to the intervention of the People's Commissar of Justice, Socialist Revolutionary Isaac Steinberg.

By a decision of the SR Central Committee, he left at the end of May for Siberia, which was considered by the Socialist-Revolutionaries as a potential base of resistance to the Bolshevik regime.

On November 18, Alexander Kolchak launched a coup d'etat that dissolved the provisional government and established a military dictatorship in its place.