 In 1873 Zardabi with another intelligentsia activist Najaf bey Vazirov staged the first Azerbaijani theatrical production based on the play by Mirza Fatali Akhundov, "The Adventure of a Miser".In 1875, he founded "Akinchi", the first independent newspaper to appear in Azerbaijani language in the Russian Empire.Naming itself as Akinchi (ploughman), this paper addressed itself primarily to the peasant reader in accordance with Zardabi's Narodnik(Populist) ideas, that was dominant in universities of Russia in that era .The preferred language of expression among literate people was Persian and they reacted with hostility to using "unprintable idiom of common folk" (Azeri).