Following the February Revolution of 1917, Chernov was Minister for Agriculture in the Russian Provisional Government and advocating immediate land reform.

His radical proclivities attracted the attention of the local police and Chernov transferred to school in Iurev for his final year of study.

[2] Chernov enrolled in the Law department of Moscow University, where he once again joined a radical discussion circle, defending populist views against Marxists.

[3] After marrying Anastasia Sletova in 1898 and spending some time organizing the peasants around Tambov, he went abroad to Zürich in 1899.

In January 1918 he was Chairman of the Russian Constituent Assembly, which was dissolved by the Bolsheviks shortly after it began meeting.

He became a member of an anti-Bolshevik government leading the more moderate Social Revolutionaries in Samara, before fleeing to Europe and then in 1941 to the United States.