Nikolay Kondratyev 101: Who is a Russian Economist? in our article of Zatrun.com, we will cover in detail everything you need to know about the Russian economist Nikolay Kondratyev that our readers are curious about.

Who is Nikolay Kondratyev?

Nikolay Kondratyev (1892-1938) was a Russian economist and a supporter of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the Soviet Union. He was arrested during the peak of Stalin’s Great Purge and fifty years later his rights were returned. He put forward a theory that capitalist Western economies have long-term (50-60 years) economic growth, followed by economic cycles that include periods of depression. These movements are now known as “Kondratiev waves.”

Nikolay Kondratyev was born on March 4, 1892 in the Kostroma district of Moscow as the son of a peasant family. Before the revolution, St. He took private lessons from Mikhail Tugan Baranovsky at St. Petersburg University. Kondratyev’s first professional work focused on problems of agricultural economics, statistics, and food supply. He was a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and at the age of 25 was appointed Minister of Supply in the last Alexander Kerensky government on October 5, 1917. But this mission was short-lived.

After the revolution, he devoted himself to academic research. in 1919, he was appointed a lecturer at the Peter the Great Agricultural Academy and founded the Conjuncture Institute in Moscow in October 1920. As the first director of the institute, he transformed the small scientists into a respected and large institution that employed 51 researchers by 1923.

His Career Life

The Russian economist Nikolay Kondratyev, a supporter of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the Soviet Union, intervened in the discussion of the “Scissors Crisis” in 1923, following the general ideas of his colleagues. between 1923 and 1925, he worked on the 5-year development plan for Soviet agriculture. After publishing his first book explaining the theory of large cycles tentatively in 1924, he traveled to England, Germany, Canada, and the United States and visited many universities until he returned to Russia.

As a proponent of the Soviet NEP, Kondratyev advocated the prioritization of agriculture and the strategic option of developing the industrial production of consumer goods instead of the development of heavy industry. Kondratyev’s influence on economic policy lasted until 1925. it declined in 1926 and ended in 1927 due to political changes in the leadership of the Communist Party, leading to the dissolution of the NEP.

His Political Activities

Nikolay Kondratyev was removed from the directorate of the Conjuncture Institute in 1928 and arrested in July 1930, probably for being an illegal member of the non-existent “Peasant Workers’ Party”. In August 1930, President Stalin wrote a letter to Prime Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, asking him to execute Nikolay Kondratyev.

Kondratyev, who was tried as an “ear-professor” and sentenced to 8 years in prison, served his sentence in Suzdal near Moscow from February 1932, continued his research despite deteriorating health and decided to write 5 new books, as he told his wife. Some of these texts were completed and published in Russian.

Nikolai sent his last letter to Kondratyeva on August 31, 1938, to his daughter Elena. Shortly after, on September 17, during Stalin’s Great Purge, he was tried for the second time. He was later sentenced to another 10 years in prison with no contact with the outside world. However, he was executed by firing squad the same day. Kondratyev was 46 years old when he was executed, and he was restored to his former rights only 50 years later, on July 16, 1987.