Научная элита в условиях становления тоталитарного политического режима в СССР: судьба профессора Н. Д. Кондратьева
Scientific Elite in the Conditions of the Formation of the Totalitarian Political Regime in the USSR: the Fate of Professor N. D. Kondratyev

Summary/Abstract: The urgency of this article is determined by the fact that the legacy of the outstanding Soviet economist Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratyev, who was repressed in the 1930s, needs in-depth study as a part of history of scientific thought, which is closely related to the socio-political realities of its era. The purpose of the author's work is to analyze the argument on challenges of planning, which was presented by Kondratyev in the course of the discussion in the 1920s, and to consider it within the broad context of his scientific economic concept. The article presents the characteristics of such aspects of Kondratyev’s scientific activity as market research and forward planning. The results of the analysis show that Kondratyev managed not only to go a long way in each of these areas of scientific research, but also to synthesize them. The key conceptual idea that is central in all of Kondratyev’s scientific works was to discover and study the objective laws of market economy development with the aim of implementing scientific knowledge to the fullest extent possible in the practical purpose. Therefore, the doctrine of large cycles of conjuncture should be considered as the foundation on which Kondratyev built his theoretical and methodological principles of forecasting and planning. The content of Kondratyev’s concept was contrary to the political priorities that were chosen by the Soviet leadership in the late 1920s. Forced industrialization and collectivization, which were carried out at the expense of non-economic coercion, inevitably meant the collapse of market relations and the transition to the directive methods of economic management. For this reason, the researchers of market economy lost any opportunity to continue their scientific work and express their views. The ruling elite headed by Stalin, which asserted totalitarian control over science, doomed Kondratyev and many of his associates not only to be ousted from their professional sphere, but also to be physically destroyed.

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