 In 1906, he attended the first duma at the Taurida Palace in Saint Petersburg and took note on how little the British officers attending could understand the political situation in Russia at the time.Viewing the study of Russian as less of a scholarly pursuit than an urgent political necessity, he founded the first School of Russian Studies in Britain at the University of Liverpool in 1907.In 1908, Pares was promoted to Professor of Russian History, Language, and Literature at the University of Liverpool, which he held until 1917 when he became Professor of Russian at the university's School of Slavonic Studies.