In 1976–1977, he served in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany as a ground loader for a 152-mm self-propelled gun 2S3 "Akatsiya", and then as an editor of the divisional newspaper.

[4] After his military service, he began working as an instructor in the school department of the Bauman District Committee of the Komsomol of the city of Moscow.

One of the writer's most fascinating works is the adventurous love-detective story “The Sky of the Fallen”, about the cruel price that must be paid for the super-fast success and fabulous enrichment of the new masters of life.

The novel "The Mushroom King" (2005) was published in more than 130,000 copies, full of fresh aphorisms and caustic satire on the spiritual-moral and family-sexual turmoil of middle-aged top managers.

In 1981, Polyakov defended his PhD thesis on the topic: "The poet-warrior Georgy Suvorov (On the history of front-line poetry)",[5] candidate of philological sciences.

[6][7] In the 2000s, he came out with a series of publicistic essays-pamphlets ("The Silence of the Kremlin" and others) - about the role of literature in the life of post-reform Russian society, writerly conformism and the levers of manipulation of the literary process.

In the writer's novels and stories, fragments of which are of a journalistic nature, a brightly satirical picture of the life of the Russian creative intelligentsia is given.

[14] In December 2015, for his political position and views on the Ukrainian events of 2013–2014, Polyakov was included in the blacklist of Russian citizens who are “persona non grata” on the territory of Ukraine.