From 1912 to 1914 he was a Deputy of the Fourth State Duma.[2] In 1912–13, he also worked on the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda. In 1914, along with the other members of the Bolshevik group in the Fourth Duma (apart from the double agent Roman Malinovsky), and was deported the following year to Turkestan. He later wrote reminiscences of this period which were translated into English as The Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma.
Badayev returned to Petrograd after the February Revolution in 1917 and became actively involved in the city duma, and in the management of food distribution. After the Bolshevik Revolution he was appointed chairman of the Food Commissariat for the North West region of Russia.[4]
In September 1919 Petrograd consumer commune (shortly Petrocommune) was established by Decree of the Sovnarkom "On consumer communities" dated 16 March 1919. It was the germ of the cooperative sector during the "war communism". Badayev was the founding chairman of the Petrocommune governance.[5]