After graduating from the Moscow Communications Institute, he worked at the Scientific Research Institute of Radio of the Soviet Ministry of Communications as an engineer, leading designer, senior research fellow, and deputy director.

At the institute, he headed the pioneering work on the creation of the world's first satellite television broadcasting system "Orbita" in the USSR, which was put into operation in 1967 and provided the opportunity to watch Soviet Central Television programs for almost 90 million citizens of the USSR living in Siberia and the Russian Far East.

[2] Talyzin was Chosen by Mikhail Gorbachev in October 1985 to help start the program of economic change known as perestroika, after serving five years as the Soviet representative at Comecon, the Eastern European trade bloc.

Talyzin came under strong criticism, and moved to the post of head of the Bureau for Social Development in 1988,[3] blamed for slowing reforms.

In September 1989, with perestroika failing to produce the promised results, he was dismissed, along with many other conservatives in Nikolai Ryzhkov's government, whom he blamed for slowing the pace of reforms.