During World War I he was vice president of Alexander Guchkov's Military-Industrial Committee, and after the February Revolution he became Minister of Trade and Industry in the Provisional Government. He was an active member of the irregular freemasonic lodge, the Grand Orient of Russia’s Peoples. After the October Revolution he emigrated to France, where he was a leader of leftist Russian émigrés; at the start of World War II he moved to the United States.