[1] His family were accused of helping Soviet partisans during the Second World War, resulting in the four-year old Yury and his mother spending one and a half years in a concentration camp in Alytus, Lithuania.

In 1984, he was appointed head of the press sector, as an assistant to the first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU of Bryansk Oblast.

Since July 1998, Lodkin was a representative of the Federation Council in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union State of Belarus and Russia.

On 5 December 2004, a few hours before the start of voting, by the decision of the Supreme Court, Lodkin was suspended from participation in the elections on charges of violations of the law.

Lodkin, who was considered one of the campaign's favorites, linked the suspension to his membership in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and called the candidacy of United Russia representative Nikolay Denin "the worst of all".

Lodkin accused United Russia representatives of unwillingness to "win the elections fairly" and called them "cowards."