In 1916, he came to the then-Russian boundary town of Jarkent, Semiryechye Oblast, founded and populated by Ili Uyghurs who had escaped to Russia after 1881, when Qing troops re-took the Ili valley of Xinjiang. In Jarkent, he served under local Uyghur leader and wealthy merchant Valiahun Yuldashev, and, after the Russian Revolution erupted in 1917, helped to organize small, local Uyghur self-defense groups. After the Russian Civil War came to Semiryechye, Hoja Niyaz met Uyghur revolutionary Abdulla Rozibakiev, one of the founders of the Inqlawi Uyghur Ittipaqi ("Revolutionary Uyghur Union") in 1921, a revolutionary nationalistic organization under umbrella of the Comintern.