Kondratieff cycle/wave what is it? What were the implications? Why was Kondratieff persecuted by Joseph Stalin The Kondratieff cycle is a theory created by 19th century economist, Nikolai Kondratieff. The theory entitles the use of various data in order to anticipate future economic developments. Some of these data included wage medians, interest rates, raw material prices, foreign trades, and bank deposits.
Observing charts of great length with each of these data factored in. Observing various characteristics of this graph, for example the growth and contractionary phase of the wave, he was able to detail the number of years that the economy fluctuated positively and negatively over a period of 50 years! He was also able to predict which industries would suffer the most during the downwave.He was also able to theorize the advancement of technology and its influence on the next upwave. The implications of the Kondratieff cycle is that the economic growth graph will always appear as negative cosine graph spanning over 50-54 years and with each new addition to technology, there will be an upwave, but not one with a magnitude so large that it escapes this tendency.A simplified long wave pattern that applies to Kondratieff himself is the expansion was steam engine creation inn the early 1800s, the use of the railway steel to create a fluent transportation in the late 1800s, electrical engineering to frequent the use of electricity in households in the early 1900s, the mass production of petrochemical automobiles in the mid 1900s, and the existence of the internet and telecommunications in the late 1900s.
Another implication, however, is that with each upwave, it falls back down to its original low, never freeing itself of this trend.As we continue to venture through the age of information and telecommunications and discover new technologies at a more substantial rate, the implication is made that these fluctuations could also begin to speed up though never escaping the trend of upwave and downwave limits. Applications of these theories were effective during the industrial revolution and these information that Kondratieff’s cycle indicates, can be used to avert from depression. Kondratieff was persecuted for his insightful commentary of the economic development of Russia, particularly in the agriculture and methodology and was hence, imprisoned for 8 years.
However, he continued investigating his wave theory and planned to publish more works after his release. However, after his term of 8 years was served, he was executed during Stalin’s Great Purge. The great purge was a large scale massacre enacted by Joseph Stalin, the leader of Russia at the time that involved in communist party and government officials, Red Army personals, and any sort of saboteurs that might be a threat to the Russia’s commonwealth. Unfortunately, Nikolai Kondratieff fell under the classification of a saboteur and was quickly executed by a rifling squad.
