He served in the Red Army and worked as a metallurgist until 1940, when he began a rapid rise as a communist party official, filling posts left vacant by the mass arrests during the Great Purge.

"[2] When Stalin died in March 1953 Malenkov temporarily took control, Aristov lost all of these positions and was demoted to a non-party job in Khabarovsk.

In May 1960, he was removed from his post as secretary, though he still held a senior position as a member of the RSFSR Bureau, which supervised party affairs in the Russian republic.

The French journalist Michel Tatu, a close observer of Kremlin politics at the time, wrote that "the reason for his concealed dismissal are completely obscure.

According to Khrushchev's son, Sergei, "More than once I heard father express disappointment with Averky Borisovich Aristov: you start talking to him about business, and he always changes the subject to fishing.