Rudzutaks was released after the February Revolution of 1917. After his release, Rudzutaks served in various positions in the All-Russia Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RCP(b)) and the trade unions. As head of the State Water Transport Administration, in 1918-19, he organised the emergency of food supplies along the Volga, to Moscow, to enable the city to function during the first month’s civil war. In November 1919, he was posted to Tashkent as a member of the Turkestan Commission, in charge of imposing communist rule in Central Asia. In March 1920, he was elected to the Central Committee of the RCP (b). In November 1920, he was appointed Secretary of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions. In that role, he supported Vladimir Lenin's position both against the Workers' Opposition, who wanted to put the unions in control of industry, and the left, led by Leon Trotsky, who proposed incorporating the unions in the state apparatus. At the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b), which was dominated by arguments over the future of the unions, he was re-elected to the Central Committee with 467 votes - nine more than Josif Stalin. Rudzutaks was ousted from his position as Secretary during the All Russian Congress of Trade Unions, in May 1921, when he and the chairman, Mikhail Tomsky were blamed by Lenin and the Central Committee for failing to bloc a resolution put forward by the veteran Marxist, David Riazanov, that would have allowed union leaders to be elected by their own members rather than being selected by the party. In April, he was sent back to Tashkent, with Tomsky, to supervise the establishment of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Alexander Barmine, the Soviet official who greeted them on arrival, remembered Rudzutaks as "a tall fellow with spectacles and curly hair, his strong features set in a round face." In April 1922, Rudzutaks was a member of the soviet delegation at the Genoa Conference, where his task appears to have been to alert Moscow whenever the unpredictable foreign minister, Georgy Chicherin departed from his negotiating brief. From 1922 to 1923, he was the chairman of Central Asian bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). In April 1923, Rudzutaks was recalled to Moscow to work as one of three secretaries of the Central Committee, working alongside Stalin who was General Secretary.