In 1914–15, he was a member of the Vyborg District Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, and edited the newspaper Proletarian Voice.

From April 1917, again in the Urals, from October 1917 a member of the Perm Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks), organized the workers' militia and the Red Guard units.

Together with representatives of the Ural Regional Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), he was one of the organizers of the first political departments of the Soviet Army.

On his initiative, political workers' courses were created, on the basis of which the Red Army Teacher Training Institute was formed, later transformed into the Military–Political Academy.

In May 1919, he was a member of the City Defense Committee, and was sent as the authorized to the 7th Army on the Lugov front sector against General Yudenich's troops.

In battle near Preobrazhenskaya station near the village of Krasnye Gory, he was seriously wounded, surrounded by the White Guards, and shot himself in order to not be captured and taken prisoner.

In November 1919, the Nikolai Tolmachyov Teaching Institute of the Red Army was established on the basis of agitator courses, which was charged with training teachers for the Red Army literacy schools, political instructors, lecturers and librarians.