Nikolai Kondratiev (1892-1938) was a Russian economist.

He proposed a theory that Western capitalist economies have long term (40-60 year) cycles of boom followed by depression. These cycles are now called "Kondratiev waves".

Kondratiev was arrested 1930. Stalin took a keen personal interest in Kondratiev's trial. As a distinguished economist with an international reputation Kondratiev was considered a threat to the regime. Kondratiev was forced to confess to imaginary crimes. Convicted as a "kulak-professor", he was banished to Suzdal in 1932. In 1938 he was issued a new sentence - ten years without the right to correspond with the outside world; this phrase was a code for a death sentence and Kondratiev was executed on the same day it was issued.

External link

• Kondratiev wave website - by Gunter Krumme, University of Washington