Akselrod joined the Jewish Labour Bund in 1905. By 1910 he fled abroad from his exile in Siberia. He started working for the Social Democrat Berner Tagwacht newspaper and was a member of the Zimmerwald Left. In April 1917 he returned from Zürich to Russia on the sealed train with Lenin. After the October Revolution he was head of the press office of the Council of People's Commissars, in April 1918 head of the press office of the Central Executive Bureau of the Bolsheviks (Sovnarkom).