He was a member of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union with special responsibility for economic affairs.
He later worked as an advisor to Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, and was the second-in-command of Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov's government.
Under Gorbachev he was one of the major advocates of rapid economic reform,[2] with the consultancy of the Italian economist Giancarlo Pallavicini, and in 1998 became a member of the Economic Crisis Group.
Upon hearing of his death, the then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated: Mr Abalkin was one of the figures at the origins of Russia’s transformation to a market economy and did much to establish new economic mechanisms.
A scholar known all around the world, Academician Abalkin had deserved influence in the Russian and international academic communities.