Considered one of the Kadets' leading theoreticians, Gredeskul defended[3] radical traditions of the Russian intelligentsia against criticism from the Right by Vekhi authors in 1909.

In late 1911, after the assassination of prime minister Pyotr Stolypin by Bogrov, a former secret police informer, Gredeskul argued that with the decline in revolutionary terrorism after 1907, the government should abandon its covert operations as well [4].

In 1916, at the height of World War I, he published a pamphlet on the problem of ethnic minorities in Russia, which suggested that his views were evolving in the nationalist direction [7].

In 1916 he began writing for Alexander Protopopov's Russkaya Volya (Russian Will), a nationalist newspaper, which led[4] to Gredeskul's resignation from the Kadet Central Committee.

After the Bolshevik takeover, Gredeskul stayed in Soviet Russia [8] and argued that Russian intellectuals should come to terms with the new government, which he saw as evolving in a more nationalist direction, anticipating Nikolay Ustryalov's ideas by a few months.