Kondratieff, N. D.
Kondratieff, N. D.
Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratieff (also transliterated Kondrat’ev) was one of the outstanding Russian economists and statisticians of the 1920s. He is known outside Russia almost exclusively for his work on long cycles. However, Kondratieff’s writings in the field of agricultural economics and his contribution to the development of economic planning in the Soviet Union are of considerable historical interest; with one exception, none of his work in these fields is available in English.
He was born in 1892. After brief service, at the age of 25, as deputy minister for food in the provisional (Kerensky) government, Kondratieff’s professional career was almost entirely associated with the Moscow Business Conditions Institute (Kon’iunkturnyi Institut), which he founded and directed during the entire period of its existence, from 1920 to 1928.
A considerable part of Kondratieff’s work at the Business Conditions Institute (which included editing its bulletin) was devoted to obtaining better statistical information on farming and the place of farming in the Soviet economy. His original work in this area consisted, among other things, in the elaboration of a set of price indices for products sold and purchased by farmers, the so-called “peasant indices.”
In the early 1920s, Kondratieff drafted the first five-year plan for agriculture. His official position brought him in close contact with the various groups in charge of developing economic policies, including the first five-year plan. In internal and public discussions, Kondratieff argued for policies that would not place undue burdens on farmers —that is, against the setting of unrealistically high goals. His endeavor to analyze current economic conditions and prospects objectively and his skepticism as to the possibilities of global and de-tailed planning brought Kondratieff into conflicts with official policies. In 1930 he was arrested and made to appear (in 1931) as a witness at one of the political trials of the enemies of the Stalinist regime. Although he was alleged to be the head of a clandestine “Working Peasants’ party,” Kondratieff was never brought to open trial but was kept in prison, where he died on an unknown date. After the end of the Stalin era some of the surviving associates of Kondratieff were “rehabilitated” and returned to professional work, but Kondratieff’s pioneering contributions still await recognition in the Soviet Union.
Although, in the words of Schumpeter, it was Kondratieff “who brought the phenomenon [of the long cycles] fully before the scientific community and who systematically analyzed all the material available to him on the assumption of the presence of a Long Wave, characteristic of the capitalist process” (Schumpeter 1939, vol. 1, p. 164), actually the existence of long cycles was surmised by several economists prior to World War I. Among academic economists, Aftalion, Pareto, Lenoir, and Spiethoff all made reference to long cycles in one way or another; among socialist writers, Parvus and J. van Gelderen suggested their existence. S. De Wolff published an article on long waves two years after Kondratieff’s 1922 book.
Kondratieff used the term “long waves” rather than “long cycles” and always referred to his findings as merely a hypothesis. His view on the existence of regular recurring long swings in economic life began to take shape in 1919–1920, and the hypothesis was first formulated, together with a tentative dating of the swings, in a study published in 1922. A fuller statement, supported by statistical analysis to which very little was added in subsequent publications, appeared in 1925 (“The Long Waves in Economic Life,” published in Germany a year later and in 1935, in an abridged version, in English). Outside the Soviet Union, knowledge of Kondratieff’s work in this field is derived almost exclusively from these two translations.
The analysis of smoothed deviations from the trend of a collection of 36 annual price, value, and physical quantity series for the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany led Kondratieff to suggest the following dating of long waves: (1) From the end of the 1780s (or beginning of the 1790s) to 1844–1851, with a peak in 1810–1817; (2) from 1844–1851 to 1890–1896, with a peak in 1870–1875; and (3) a rise from 1890–1896 to 1914–1920, when a decline “probably begins” (1928 a).
Kondratieff held the existence of long waves as “at least very probable.” He conceded that the period covered by the statistical data was not long enough “to enable us to assert beyond doubt the cyclical character of waves” ([1925] 1935, p. 112). He doubted, however, that strict uniform periodicity existed—any more than in any other social or economic phenomena.
Kondratieff did not provide a complete theory to explain the causes of long cycles; instead, in his subsequent book (1928 a), he merely enumerated certain relevant factors, such as significant changes in technology following major inventions and discoveries, wars and social upheavals, and gold discoveries. He did not show what causal relationships exist between these developments and the dynamics of timing of long cycles. In another publication (1928 b; not translated and therefore largely unknown outside the Soviet Union), Kondratieff advanced a theory that long swings reflect spurts in the reinvestment of fixed capital. Kondratieffs hypothesis was immediately violently attacked by Soviet economists, with D. I. Oparin perhaps the most able opponent (see 1928 a).
The statistical evidence for long cycles presented by Kondratieff was critically examined by G. Garvy (1943), who concluded that the waves identified by Kondratieff are, in part at least, the result of the specific techniques of statistical analysis used, that the dating of many of the turning points is arbitrary, and that the statistical data used by Kondratieff are limited in time and scope.
Kondratieffs name has become familiar to non-Russian economists mainly because Schumpeter attached it to the long cycle which forms part of his own three-cycle model of economic fluctuations. Some of the work on long cycles, particularly in western Europe, continues to be associated with Kondratieffs hypothesis (for details, see Imbert 1956; Weinstock 1964). Studies of more limited scope have attempted to identify long cycles in specific activities, such as shipbuilding, transportation, and building construction, or to identify general cycles of longer duration than business cycles but shorter than the “Kondratieff cycle.” Long swings in prices have also been the subject of numerous studies.
George Garvy
[For the historical context of Kondratieff’s work, see the biographies of Aftalion; Pareto; Spiethoff. For discussion of the subsequent development of Kondratieff’s ideas, see Time series, article onCYCLES;and the biography of Schumpeter.]
WORKS BY KONDRATIEFF
1922 Mirovoe khoziaistvo i ego kon’iunktury vo vremia i posle voiny (The World Economy and Its Condition During and After the War). Vologda (Russia) : Oblastnoe Otdelenie Gosudartsvennogo Izdatelstva. → Contains the first sketch of Kondratieffs theory of long cycles.
(1925) 1935 The Long Waves in Economic Life. Review of Economic Statistics 17, pt. 2:105–115. → First published in Russian in Volume 1 of Voprosy kon’iunktury.
(1927) 1964 Critical Remarks on the Plan for the Development of the National Economy. Pages 438–451 in Nicolas Spulber (editor), Foundations of Soviet Strategy for Economic Growth: Selected Soviet Essays, 1924–1930. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. → First published in Russian.
1928 a Bol’shie tsikly kon’iunktury (Major Economic Cycles). Moscow: Krasnaia Presnia. → Includes Oparin’s critique of Kondratieff’s theory.
1928 b Dinamika tsen promyshlennykh i sel’skokhoziaistvennykh tovarov (The Dynamics of Industrial and Agricultural Prices). Moscow, Kon’iunkturnyi Institut, Voprosy kon’iunktury 4:5–83. → See pages 179–184 for a summary in English.
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
De Wolff, S. 1924 Prosperitats- und Depressionsperioden. Pages 13–43 in Der lebendige Marxismus: Festgabe zum 70. Geburtstage von Karl Kautsky. Jena (Germany): Thüringer Verlagsanstalt.
Garvy, George 1943 Kondratieff’s Theory of Long Cycles. Review of Economic Statistics 25:203–220. → Contains numerous bibliographical references to the Russian critical literature on Kondratieff’s work.
Imbert, Gaston (1956) 1959 Des mouvements de longue durèe Kondratieff. Aix-en-Provence (France): Pensèe Universitaire. → Contains an extensive bibliography.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1939 Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process. 2 vols. New York and London: McGraw-Hill. → An abridged version was published in 1964.
Weinstock, Ulrich 1964 Das Problem der Kondratieff Zyklen: Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung einer Theorie der “langen Wellen” und ihrer Bedeutung. IFO- Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung, Munich, Schriftenreihe, No. 58. Berlin and Munich: Duncker & Humblot. → Contains an extensive bibliography in several languages.