After graduating from the university in 1896, Atabekyan settled in Bulgaria (as he was banned from entering Russia), and gradually abandoned political activities. Between 1896 and 1917 he worked as a doctor in Northern Persia; from 1914 to 1917 in the Imperial Russian Army as head of a field hospital on the Caucasian front. Upon the dissolution of the imperial army following the February Revolution, he again met Kropotkin and became an active anarchist in Moscow. He served as the editor of the anarchist periodical "Pocin" from 1919–1923, representing the anarcho-cooperative trend in the libertarian movement.