He graduated from the Moscow Teachers' Institute in 1890, became an elementary school teacher, joined the revolutionary movement as a student in Moscow in 1892, and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1896. He was arrested, and exiled to Tula district, where he met other exiles, including Alexander Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov. Together they joined the Bolsheviks after their release in the winter of 1904. When "Bor'ba" was published in November 1905, Skvortsov-Stepanov was a member of the editorial board. In 1906 he was a delegate to the Fourth Congress of the RSDLP, where he supported Lenin. During the period 1907–10, he favoured the Mezhraiontsy faction, but later fell again under the influence of Lenin. In 1907–09, he, Bazarov and Bogdanov produced what became the standard Russian translation of Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. In 1911, he launched the Bolshevik newspaper "Mysl", but was arrested very soon afterwards. He was repeatedly arrested and exiled for his revolutionary activities.