 He began treating Lithuanians not as an object of academic study, but as a living nation with aspirations for the future.He became active participant in Lithuanian cultural activities in Saint Petersburg by helping Lithuanian students, organizing amateur theater performances, sharing illegal Lithuanian publications (as a librarian of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he had free access to these publications), etc.Volters also publicly spoke out against the press ban, including a presentation to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1887 and an article about the Sietynas case published in "Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti" in 1897.