AviraDeArah,
“Chabad .org calls nota notkin a leader of misnagdim….he wasn’t a rov according to articles online about him; definitely wasn’t a gadol or rov of a community…”
I couldn’t find much information about him, but it seems he was more of a maskil than a misnagid. He did a lot of advocating for Jews to the Russian government, but he also sought to open schools where Russian language and other secular subjects would be taught, and to try and bring Jews into civil service (and hence out of the Pale of Settlement).