In that role, he contributed a paper on Chinese folklore to a 1918 Museum symposium, published by its parent group, the Russian Academy of Sciences.
His position at the museum gave him a realia basis: he had custody of artifacts for the study of Chinese popular tradition, including a large trove of Dunhwang documents brought back from a Russian expedition of 1914–1915.
In 1919, Alexeev became associate editor, and chief of the Eastern division, of the newly founded Publishing House for World Literature.
Under his direction, the museum's Sinological library was expanded, catalogued, and systematically employed in research, by a team of young persons Alexeev gradually gathered around him, among them the brilliant Shchutsky.
[3] Alekseyev's translations from the World War II era were collected as The Chinese Classical Prose (Китайская классическая проза) in 1958.