During Perestroika Popov became heavily involved in politics. On April 20, 1990, he became the first democratically elected mayor of Moscow. He resigned from the CPSU later that year, following Boris Yeltsin's lead at the 28th Congress. He resigned in 1992 and was replaced by the vice-mayor, Yury Luzhkov. In January 2010, he and Luzhkov published an article highly critical of Yegor Gaidar.