In 1907, he travelled along with
Édouard Chavannes through several Chinese provinces, describing ancient sculptural monuments previously unknown to international scholarship, in particular the
Song monuments of
Henan and
Tang monuments of
Shaanxi. ln addition to his Professorship, Alexeev became the Curator and Senior Researcher at the
Asiatic Museum. In that role, he contributed a paper on Chinese folklore to a 1918 Museum symposium, published by its parent group, the Russian Academy of Sciences. Alexeev's situation at this time, though perilous like everybody else's, had great potential, which he quickly proceeded to realize. His position at the museum gave him a realia basis: he had custody of artifacts for the study of Chinese popular tradition, including a large trove of Dunhwang documents brought back from a Russian expedition of 1914–1915. In 1919, Alexeev became associate editor, and chief of the Eastern division, of the newly founded Publishing House for World Literature. This provided a publishing outlet. Under his direction, the museum's Sinological library was expanded, catalogued, and systematically employed in research, by a team of young persons Alexeev gradually gathered around him, among them the brilliant Shchutsky. ==Work==