He was extremely influential in revolutionary circles until the breakup of the First International in 1876, whereupon he withdrew from politics and returned to Russia.

[2]: 167  Utin shortly thereafter became a leading member of Land and Liberty,[5]: 22  closely co-operating with Polish revolutionaries in advance of the January Uprising.

[6]: 60  The outbreak of armed revolution in Russian-held Poland made remaining in St Petersburg too dangerous; he fled Russia for London in May 1863.

"[2]: 168  The aim was to create a mouthpiece around which exiled Russians could unite, with Ogaryov and Herzen at the centre, but they saw Utin's proposals instead as a threat to their control of the journal.

[3]: 198  In 1867 Utin again tried to involve Ogaryov in a unified émigré journal, this time with Lev Mechnikov and Nikolai Zhukovsky, and was again unsuccessful.

[2]: 169 When anarchist Mikhail Bakunin founded the monthly journal Narodnoye delo (The People's Cause) with funding from Zoya Obolenskaya in Geneva in 1868, he initially made Utin a co-editor with Nikolai Zhukovsky, but ultimately did not allow him to take part in creating the first issue.

Utin, who did not believe that Bakunin's anarchism would appeal to a Russian audience, took control of the journal with the backing of several fellow emigres, including Olga Levashova, Zhukovsky's sister-in-law.

[8] The Geneva group that founded this section, following Johann Philip Becker's suggestions, wrote to Karl Marx for support and strongly distanced themselves from Bakunin.

[3]: 202–205 Utin wrote the "Nouvelles Etrangères" section for l'Égalité, the French-language IWA newspaper based in Geneva, and eventually became editor-in-chief.

Their sister, Liuba, married Mikhail Stasyulevich, an academic who had been one of Nikolai Utin's teachers and would become the founder and chief editor of Vestnik Evropy, in April 1859.