During his last year of study at the city high school (1919), he began learning Esperanto with several friends, boys and girls. Together with his equally young friends, he soon founded a little city circle of young Esperantists, which later transformed into the provincial (gubernia) circle. Both in the city and in the gubernia that union carried out an active program: in less than a year the union managed to organize six courses of Esperanto in the city itself, forty cells and little circles in the whole gubernia, and in addition, in several places, (with the help of local Esperanto instructors) even to teach the international language in the schools.