[1] In 1907 he started working in the local Treasury department, but was fired as "untrustworthy" due to his political activities.

From 1907 onward, Dybenko became active in a Bolshevik group, distributing revolutionary literature, such as the People’s Gazette and the Proletariat, which spoke to anti-Tsar sympathies, throughout the Novozybkov region.

Lenin assigned to him an assistant, an ex-tsarist admiral who helped manage the professional affairs of the Navy.

Lenin wrote in his famous article on 25 February 1918, in Pravda evening edition: A lesson humiliating but necessary : "Refused to fight,... refused to defend the Narva line,...failed to destroy everything as they retreated..."[3] Lenin added: From the point of view of the defence of the fatherland it would be a crime to enter into an armed conflict with an infinitely superior and well-prepared enemy when we obviously have no army.... implying that Dybenko and his mariners definitely were not an army.

The government issued an order to arrest Dybenko and to deliver him to Moscow, that he might face court martial.

[4] The Germans were in fact stopped by the ex-Tsarist general Aleksandr Panfilovich Nikolayev, who organized some retreating Russian soldiers to fight.

Unexpectedly, the court martial declared him innocent, since "Being no military expert, he was absolutely neither competent nor trained for the task,... he was not prepared to fight...".

According to the testimony of Jacques Sadoul, a French socialist who was present then in Moscow and wrote memoirs about this period, it was Dybenko's fellow mariners who saved him.

The intervention of his wife Alexandra Kollontai, then a People's Commissar of social affairs, also played a role.

[6][7] In April 1918, Dybenko arrived in Samara,[8] a city governed by local Left Socialist Revolutionary party, along with Anarchists and some other non-Bolshevik groups, all opposing Bolsheviks and the Brest-Litovsk peace.

Dybenko soon headed the local opposition and from that remote town he published letters accusing Lenin of corruption, stealing 90 tons of gold, incompetence, terrorism, and of being a German agent.

In order to keep him as far as possible from the Baltic Navy, Lenin gave him a low-rank military job, as a battalion commander, at the "No-man's land" between Russia and Ukraine.

In the winter 1918, Dybenko's troops conquered some towns near the Russian-Ukraine border in the Kharkov (now Kharkiv) district.

In the beginning of 1919, Dybenko unexpectedly received a general-rank appointment as the commander of the Red Army forces which invaded Ukraine, in particularly, the 1st Trans-Dniepr division.

It could help the Bolsheviks to pretend it was just another military force acting in the Ukrainian chaos, rather than an "official invasion".

The Dybenko troops supplied their own needs robbing both the local population, and the trains carrying coal and provisions to Russia.

In April 1919 Dybenko disregarded the orders of his superiors and invaded Crimea, instead of moving his forces into the eastern Ukraine (Donbas).

Dybenko created what he called "The Crimean Soviet Army", with 9000 men, independent from the Ukrainian Front.

He created the Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic, and invited Lenin's brother Dmitry Ulianov, to be the prime minister there.

In March 1921 Dybenko led, under the command of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the suppression of the naval rebellion in Kronstadt.

Following the military action, Dybenko created a court martial, that "Individually discussed each man's case".

According to Stalin's well known method, his enemy of old, corps commander Ivan Semenovich Kutyakov (ru), a renowned hero of the Civil War, was assigned as Dybenko's deputy.

Dybenko became a member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was promoted to Komandarm second class ("Four Rombs", at that time it was equivalent to a 4 star general), and appointed the Leningrad military district commander after Iona Yakir's downfall.

Dybenko apparently welcomed the start of Stalin's assault on the high command of the Red Army during the Great Purge, because it began with the sudden arrests of Marshal Tukhachevsky and other senior officers in May 1937.

When the Military Council to discuss the affair on 1 June 1937, with Stalin present, Dybenko boasted about his past conflict with Tukhachevsky and his fellow defendants, saying: "They declared that we were illiterate.

At first, he was moved from his command of the Leningrad Military District officially for "lack of trust"[13] and appointed Deputy People's Commissar of Forestry Industry, as a preparation for his arrest, in order to disconnect him from his followers.

[14] Edward Radzinsky citing an unknown NKVDist,[15] claimed that NKVD tortured Dybenko by putting a box with nails over his head.

questions this statement, claiming that contrary to the legend about a staunch revolutionary, Dybenko during all his five arrests (including the ones by Tsarist Russia) was quick to confess and betray his comrades.