In the course of his life, Burtsev fought oppressive policies from Tsarism in Imperial Russia, followed by the Bolsheviks and later Adolf Hitler's National Socialism.

When the ship found itself surrounded by Turkish police vessels with Russians on board, the captain refused their demand to hand over the fugitive, announcing: “This is English territory.

And I am a gentleman!”[1] In 1898, Burtsev was arrested by British police for advocating, in his magazine Narodovolets (Народоволец, A Member of Narodnaya Volya), the assassination of Nicholas II.

Upon his return to the West in 1907, Burtsev began publishing the magazine Obshcheye Delo (Общее дело, Common Cause) which was a continuation of the foreign edition of Byloye beginning with the 7th issue.

By exposing numerous Tsarist agent provocateurs such as Yevno Azef, Burtsev gained fame as a counterintelligence expert and became known as "the Sherlock Holmes of the Revolution".

In his article Either Us or the Germans and Those with Them (Russian Freedom, July 7, 1917), he listed the major enemies of Russia: On the day of the October Revolution, he was arrested on orders of Leon Trotsky, which led some historians to count him as the first political prisoner in the USSR.

Despite their political differences and public disputes in the press, Maxim Gorky pleaded for Burtsev's release and in February 1918 he was indeed freed and left Soviet Russia.