After the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power, Orakhelashvili chaired the Vladikavkaz Soviet. Between 1918 and 1920 he worked in the underground Bolshevik group in the Democratic Republic of Georgia, and was arrested by the Georgian government. He was released in accordance to the Moscow Treaty between Georgia and Soviet Russia (May 1920) and became chairman of the recently legalized Georgian Communist party. In February 1921, he participated in a Bolshevik diversion in southern Georgia, which was used by Vladimir Lenin’s government as a pretext for the Red Army invasion of Georgia. He provided the preface to "Тайны меньшевистского царства" ("Secrets of Menshevik Georgia") by Iakov Moiseyevich Shafir (1921) in which archival material was used to justify the Soviet invasion.