Lev Kamenev arrested in 1902, ending his formal education. From that point on, he worked as a professional revolutionary, and was active in the capital St. Petersburg, Moscow and Tiflis. He adopted the surname Kamenev during this period. In the early 1900s, he married Olga Bronstein, a fellow Marxist (and younger sister of Leon Trotsky, who had also adopted a different surname). The couple had two sons together. Kamenev joined the Communists in 1901. He took a brief trip abroad in 1902, meeting Russian social democratic leaders living in exile, including Vladimir Lenin, whose adherent and close associate he became. He also
Lev Chernyi his revolutionary activities. On his return from Siberia in 1917, Chernyi enjoyed great popularity among Moscow workers as a lecturer, and was at this time one of Russia's leading individualist anarchists and one of anarchism's main ideologues. He was the Secretary and leading theorist of the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups, which was formed in March 1917 after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and was primarily concerned with disseminating propaganda to Moscow's poorer classes. A personal acquaintance of Lev Kamenev and other leading Bolsheviks, Chernyi denounced the nascent Russian Soviet Republic at a rally on March 5, 1918, declaring