From July 1918 he was head of the Soviet press service in Germany. He stayed out of the November revolution in Copenhagen, returning the 8 December to Germany. On 14 January 1919 he was arrested in Stuttgart, brought to Munich and formally placed under house arrest by Kurt Eisner in the Ebenhausen sanatorium. In April 1919 he became a member of the Action Committee of the Workers and Soldiers Council and an advisory member of the Economics Commission. After the suppression of the Council Republic he was apprehended on 14 May in Tyrol and sent back to Munich, where he was accused and sentenced to 15 years in prison.