In May 1874 he met the revolutionary populist Porphyry Voinaralsky, and helped him to create and organize an underground circle of self-education.

At the end of 1879, while in detention, he began writing, his first work being an essay entitled The Mute, which attacked wealthy populists and the way the autocracy dealt with the problems of the poor.

In Siberia he lived in Tobolsk province (present-day Tyumen Oblast), and engaged in economic research in its southern districts, for which he received an award from the West Siberian Division of the Russian Geographical Society.

In his first stories, he drew a vivid picture of the village, with its desperate financial need, powerlessness and helplessness.

[4] The majority of his works deal with the issues of the peasants, and with lower-class intellectuals, whose purpose he felt it was to devote themselves to the people.