He returned to Leningrad again in 1927. The political climate had worsened harshly; Bigiev witnessed the League of Militant Atheists and was personally forbidden to leave the country. He was also out of work; he continuously applied to the scholar Ignaty Krachkovsky as a teacher of Arabic, Persian and Turkic languages at Leningrad University, and in 1929 even applied to the government of Afghanistan for a job. His wife and four of his children were temporarily arrested. In 1930, after he, his family and other clergymen where deprived of food coupons, he finally decided to secretly leave the country.