[2] Yury was born in Makeyevka, Ukrainian SSR, to the family of Pyotr Vlasov (1905–1953), a military journalist and Comintern agent, and Maria Danilovna Vlasova (née Lymar), a Kuban Cossacks.

[4][5] Yury studied at the Saratov Suvorov military school (1946–1953), then at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy in Moscow, from which he graduated with honors in 1959.

Between 1959 and 1963 he won all the competitions he participated in, with a major success at the Rome 1960 Summer Olympics where he set three world records and became the first man to clean and jerk more than 200 kg (202.5).

In reality Zhabotinsky merely positioned himself behind Vlasov, who started the event first, and in his last attempt would order (and lift) any weight required to win the overall competition.

[10] At the peak of his popularity Vlasov was frequently included in international delegations visiting foreign leaders, such as Fidel Castro and Charles de Gaulle.

[11] Arnold Schwarzenegger, seven-times Mr. Olympia, considered Vlasov as a major motivation for his career as a bodybuilder and a strongman.

Vlasov's health suddenly deteriorated in 1978–1979, which was related to a nervous breakdown due to his writing activities but not to weightlifting.

[10] Vlasov became a professional writer and journalist years before his retirement from competitions – his short stories were published by Soviet newspapers back in 1959.

Starting from the 1962 European Championships, he was attending international competitions not only as a weightlifter, but also as a special correspondent to the major Soviet newspaper Izvestia.

He published over 15 novels, most notably the Flaming Cross trilogy (1991–93) about life during and after the Russian Revolution, and more than 10 short story collections.

[19] When he first entered the Duma, Vlasov was a member of the liberal Inter-regional Deputies Group, along with Andrei Sakharov, Anatoly Sobchak and Boris Yeltsin.

During his presidential campaign, Vlasov promoted himself as patriot fighting both communism and an alleged "Zionist conspiracy" against the Russian people.

[24] His campaign platform proclaimed, "There is only one single force that is able to unite almost all and at the same time become the ideological basis of the Russian state – popular patriotism".

[25] Vlasov alleged that Yeltsin's policies had pushed 40% of Russia's populace below the poverty line and brought the government only 3% of the real value of privatized state property.

[6] He first married in 1957, to Natalia Modorova, a student of the Moscow Institute of Arts who was visiting his gym to draw athletes.

Vlasov remarried in 1976, after the death of his first wife, to Larisa Sergeyevna Vlasova, a student 21 years his junior.