In the summer of 1891, he assisted the Russian statistician Aleksandr Rusov in a real estate census of the Poltava Governorate where he met with Kharkiv University students Ivan Lypa, Mykola Baizdrenko, and Mykhailo Bazkevych. They visited the Taras Shevchenko Grave (Taras Hill) near Kaniv and created Ukrainian national underground political organization, the Taras Student Fraternity (Brotherhood of Taras). The fraternity was joined by such activists like Yevhen Tymchenko, Musiy Kononenko, Oleksandr Cherniakhivskyi, Mykola Mikhnovskyi and others.
