[1] She was the highest-ranking female politician under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev until the election of Galina Semenova in 1990.

[4] Biryukova worked with the Bureau for Social Development, specifically focused on labor conditions, consumer issues, housing, and health.

She became successful within this movement and created a strong rapport with the workers by campaigning for improved safety and working conditions.

[9] In the 1960s and 1970s, she campaigned to establish holiday homes for trade union members and families, as well as to improve health and safety provisions.

[9] Biryukova was made secretary and Presidium member of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in 1968.

[12] When Mikhail Gorbachev came into power in 1985, Biryukova entered the highest level of soviet politics by becoming Deputy Chair of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.

She became the first woman elected to the Secretariat of the CPSU in over 20 years, and was responsible for the light industry and production of consumer goods.

All of this international shopping was due to product shortages in the Soviet Union and was intended to help reduce labour strikes and workforce unrest.

At the conference, Biryukova called the Soviet consumer market “a crisis situation” and described the status of health services as “criminal”.