As a political immigrant in London, Kelsiyev became involved with Free Russian Press, and contributed to Kolokol, promoting, among others, the idea of supporting the Old Believers as a potentially destructive revolutionary force in Russia.

[1] Among Kelsiyev's more bizarre projects was his translation of the Bible, which he published in 1860, "[with the view], apparently, of bringing down what hundreds of millions see as a sacred Word of God, to the level of easy, controversial read," according to another Russky Vestnik review.

[2] In Tulcea (then Turkey), he founded the Russian Socialist settlement but in 1867, having lost his family to cholera, returned to Russia, disillusioned and broke.

In his later life Kelsiev contributed mostly to the conservative press (Russky Vestnik, Zarya, Vsemirny Trud, Niva) and in 1868 published his confessions under the title Perezhitoye i peredumannoye (Things I've Lived Through and Thought a Lot About), denounced by the left and praised by the right.

[3] Hertzen, who dedicated a chapter in his My Past and Thoughts to Kelsiyev, characterized him as a "religiously-minded nihilist" who "studied everything but learned nothing" and, "through his tireless struggle against all things conventional... succeeded only in undermining his own moral ground.