 His major lead role during the Russian part of his career is The Son in "Storm Over Asia" by Vsevolod Pudovkin in 1928, a major Soviet propaganda film about a fictional British consolidation of Mongolia.He was also an actor in the troop of Vsevolod Meyerhold and was then appointed as director of the movie and theater school of Kiev in Ukraine.In 1930, while in France on a European tour, he refused to return to the USSR.