In 1959 Petrov was conscripted for three-years service in the Soviet Armed Forces, then graduated from the Ural Polytechnic Institute and returned to Nizhny Tagil.

In April 1985, after the first secretary Boris Yeltsin moved to Moscow to head the construction department of the party's Central Committee, Petrov succeeded him as de facto head of Sverdlovsk Oblast.

[2] In July 1988 he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR to the Republic of Cuba.

Petrov's resignation is explained by his disagreement with the radical neoliberal reformist course, that Yeltsin's government took after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

[4] He died on 24 October 2013 after a long illness and was buried at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.