[1] In 1910, he entered the parish school in his native village, but in May 1912 he was sent to work as a farm laborer (as a shepherd for public livestock).
From May 1918, he transferred to serve in the provincial communications department, and from the end of 1920 to 1925, he worked as a carpenter at the Krasny Stroitel plant.
[citation needed] From 1926 to 1928 he served ashead of the carpentry workshop of the Vladimir city department of public utilities.
In 1937 as head of the research sector and secretary of the party committee of the Leningrad Institute of Public Utilities Engineers.
During this period, all spheres of city life were reorganized due to the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War and the siege.
In March 1949, he was sent to graduate school at the Institute of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
[citation needed] On August 13, 1949, he was arrested in the office of Georgy Malenkov; he was one of the main figures in the Leningrad affair, the post-war purges in the party apparatus.
[citation needed] On April 30, 1954, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union overturned the sentence as falsified, and Popkov was fully rehabilitated (posthumously).