From that time music accompanied him throughout his life. Post-revolutionary shocks of 1920s immediately tested the vicissitudes of life, from 1919 to 1922. While studying in a unified labor school reorganized from his gymnasium, N.Baskakov worked as an ordinary clerk, and as a draftsman in the public health department. In 1922 N.Baskakov graduated from high school and went to Gryazov pedagogical school, but the aspirations to become an Orientalist did not leave him. In 1923 Baskakov came to Moscow to enter the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. He naively entered in a questionnaire that he sympathized with "anarchists-collectivists" group that had just joined Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), and on the first interview was refused admittance. After that, without hesitation, he turned to a private Institute of the Word headed by Musin-Pushkin, now a Linguistics Institute of the Russian Academy of Science. But unable to meet the payments, he had to leave Moscow and to return to Vologda, to work in pedagogical school. At the start of 1924 Baskakov was dismissed first from his pedagogical school, and then from Vologda pedagogical school, for participation in an anti-religious dispute where he advocated that God is good, and the Satan is evil, and that God always wins, and that people need religion. Baskakov fled to Ukraine, near Cherkassy, and earned living as a tutor. In 1924, Baskakov went to Leningrad and attempted to enter the Oriental Institute, but failed again. A third attempt was a success, Baskakov was accepted to the San-Gali State Institute of People's Education. San-Gali State Institute was a two-year educational institution that was preparing teachers for high school. A number of prominent "former people" found shelter there. In 1925, Baskakov was admitted to the Moscow State University Ethnographic branch of the Historical Ethnological faculty. During his study Baskakov traveled to Karakalpak ASSR, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia and Khorezm area of Uzbekistan to gather material on Uighurs, Kirghiz and Kazakh languages, ethnography, language and folklore of Karakalpaks and Khorezm Uzbeks. His instructors were A.N. Maksimov, P.F. Preobrajensky, V.K. Trutovsky, M.N. Peterson, V.A. Gordlevsky, folklore also the literature, N.K. Dmitriev, and Vasily Bartold lectured on history of Central Asia and Jeti-su Türks.