Born at Samara, the son of a metalworker, Serebryakov left school at 14 to operate a lathe in an engineering works in Lugansk. He joined the Bolsheviks at the age of 15, during the 1905 Revolution, and was arrested several times in 1905-07, and dismissed from his job because of his revolutionary activities. In 1908, he was exiled for two years to Vologda province. In 1910-11, after his release, he acted as an itinerant Bolshevik organiser, and was a delegate to the Prague Conference in January 1912, the first which excluded Mensheviks and anyone else who did not follow the line laid down by Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks. Returning to Samara in 1912, he was arrested and sentenced to three years exile in Narym. He escaped in 1913, and was sent by the party to Baku to organise a strike, but had to leave because he was shadowed. He was arrested in Odessa, and sent back to Narym. In 1914, he escaped again, but was arrested in Moscow, and returned to Narym. He was released from exile in 1916, but was drafted into the infantry for the war against Germany.