Writer and teacher, In March 1916 he was appointed a trustee of the school district of Vilna, and then - inspector of schools Nevelsky district of Vitebsk.In 1924, Nikolai attends to clarify the boundaries between the RSFSR and the Byelorussian SSR by ethnographic research of population Nevelsky County. For two years he and his pupils gathered a wealth dialectological material studied the historical past of the province.