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.
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