Cyclical Dynamics in Economics and Politics in the Past and in the Future

Résumé En

Nikolay Kondratieff is known primarily for his theory of long cycles. However,it is worth recalling that he was among the first who started to investigate thenature of different economic cycles and their systematic interaction. Actuallythe primary classification of cycles into short, medium and long belongs toKondratieff.In 1922, in his book The World Economy and its Conjunctures during andafter the War Nikolay Kondratieff formulated for the first time the basic tenetsof the theory of long cycles (Kondratieff 1922 [2002]). As until that time theeconomic literature hardly knew any other cycles than the ones with a characteristicperiod between 7 and 11 years (which were called industrial, commercial,and so on), Kondratieff quite logically called them ‘short cycles’ (Ibid.:323). However, already in 1925, in the Long Cycles of Conjuncture (Kondratieff1925 [1993]: 25–26), he began to call the same cycles as ‘medium cycles’.1 Why? The fact is that in those years Kitchin (1923) discovered somecycles (with a characteristic period between 3 and 4 years) manifested in fluctuationsin inventories that could be denoted as truly ‘short cycles’. Later, theybecame known as ‘Kitchin cycles’. Due to the fact that the medium-term cyclesoften have internal ups and downs, a group of scientists in the Harvard Schoolheaded by Wesley Mitchell started to consider cycles statistically (not by theirlogic, but by the presence of recessions, from a recession to another recession,regardless of the point that different recessions may be significantly different asregards their strength and nature). As a result, they also detected some cycleswith a period between 3 and 4 years (which to a certain extent coincided withKitchin cycles).