In the 1930s, the Soviet Union asked Nikolai Kondratieff, a mathematician, to create a model that would “prove” that capitalism would fall and communism would endure.
Kondratieff studied economic history and reached the conclusion that economics was better explained by technology than class struggle. He observed that technology did not evolve linearly, but rather in leaps every 50 to 60 years. Named for the mathematician who made it famous, this pattern is called Kondratieff cycles or K-waves.
