After his adventure in the Caucasus, Blumkin returned to Moscow and became a student at the military college. He befriended Leon Trotsky, becoming a secretary and helped over the next two years with the "selection, critical checking, arrangement and correction of the material" in Trotsky's "Military Writings" (1923). Trotsky noted in particular the irony of a former Left SR conspirator editing the volume describing the Left SR conspiracy. Blumkin introduced Yesenin to Trotsky in the hope that Trotsky would sponsor and promote a literary journal. That sharing of friendship, scholarship, and political ideas with Trotsky would later cost Blumkin his life.