 He began his career as a foreman at the geological prospecting expedition office in Sterlitamak, a city in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.He became the chief of the geological party in 1955 and then the chief geologist for the prospecting office.In 1969, he began working at the Institute of Geology of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Ural Scientific Center, first as a senior researcher and then, starting in 1974, as head of the laboratory of tectonics.