After completing secondary school in Riga at age 16, he was a general labourer at a building materials factory, and then a metalworker.

He completed two years of evening school and in 1967, enrolled at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the State University of Latvia.

In January 1979 he was appointed as a Test Cosmonaut in OK CPC (aerospace vehicles) working on Buran.

Delays with Buran and increased need for space station crews resulted in his transferring to training for the Interkosmos programme in January 1982.

The following year he was designated as a reserve crew commander for missions to Salyut 7, with Aleksandr Serebrov and Nikolai Moskalenko.

The following year he was assigned as back up commander of the Soyuz TM-3 mission to Mir with Savinykh and Munir Habib (Syria).

This was at the first Orbiter docking with Mir, and the EO-19 crew undocked Soyuz TM-21 briefly to observe and photograph the departure of Atlantis.

His final space mission was as commander of Mir EO-24/Soyuz TM-26 for 197 days from August 1997 until February 1998 with Pavel Vinogradov.

His first EVA on 22 August 1997 was an unusual "internal spacewalk"[13] to connect power and survey damage to the depressurised Spektr module.

[16] Solovyev left the Cosmonaut Detachment in 1999 having reached compulsory retirement age and became the president of "For the Good of the Fatherland", a national organisation recognising the work of Russians devoted to cultural and social development.

He is married to Natalya Vasilyevna Solovyeva (née Katyshevtseva), with whom he has two sons, Gennady (born 1975), Illya (1980).