HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 200

Kolyma, like Magadan, immediately evoked
horrible memories, which some authors such as
Varlaam Shalamov, whose collected stories were
later published in English as Kolyma Tales, first
ventured to chronicle in the 1960s.

Kondratiev, Nikolai Dmitrievich
(1892-1938)
economist
An influential economist with an international
reputation, Kondratiev was one of the first
economists to be arrested by Stalin's police in the
1930s. Outside the Soviet Union, Kondratiev is
still known for his ideas about economic long
cycles, sometimes known as Kondratiev cycles.
Kondratiev postulated the existence of long cycles
of economic expansion and contraction with an
average of duration of about 50 years, a theory
that was well received outside the Soviet Union
but dismissed as “wrong and reactionary” by the
Soviet establishment. In the Soviet Union, Kon-
dratiev was active in the economic policy debates
of the 1920s as founder and first director of the
Moscow Conjuncture Institute (1920-28), pro-
fessor at the Timiriazev Agricultural Academy,
lecturer at the Communist Academy, and a con-
sultant for the Finance and Agriculture Commis-
sariats and the State Planning agency (Gosplan).
Although he was one of the authors of the first
five-year plan for Russian agriculture (1923-24),
Kondratiev opposed the general COMMUNIST PARTY
line adopted in the late 1920s with its emphasis
on rapid industrialization to be paid by a collec-
tivized peasantry. His defense of private agricul-
ture and proposals to redistribute wealth to the
peasantry eventually got him into political trou-
ble. In 1930 Kondratiev was charged with “right
deviationism” and membership in a nonexistent
Working Peasants Party. He was arrested and,
after a public trial, sentenced to eight years in a
labor camp, where he eventually perished. Kon-
dratiev was rehabilitated during the late 1980s,
and his work was published for the first time in
half a century. The long-suppressed details of his
death were also made public. Kondratiev was
shot in 1938 on the very day he was due to be
released from his eight-year sentence.

Komsomol
The acronym formed from the Russian words for
“Communist League of Youth,” the Komsomol
was the branch of the COMMUNIST PARTY that
enrolled members between the ages of 14 and 28.
The Komsomol was first organized in 1918 dur-
ing the Russian civil war to channel revolution-
ary youth activism in support of the revolution.
In 1922 its organization was established, and two
other supporting youth institutions were created,
the Little Octobrists, for children less than nine,
and the Young Pioneers, for children from nine
to 14 years of age. Komsomol members were to
serve as role models of Socialist behavior while
engaging in socially useful tasks. Gradually and
for the rest of its existence, the Komsomol
increasingly became the gateway to full member-
ship in the Communist Party. In the late 1920s
and early 1930s, as Soviet society embarked on a
far-reaching transformation, the Komsomol
played a crucial role in advancing the Stalinist
leadership's agenda of industrialization and col-
lectivization through its members' revolutionary
enthusiasm and ideological zealousness. Komso-
mol members were particularly active in enforc-
ing the government's antireligious campaign. As
membership in the Komsomol was opened in the
1930s, its numbers reached 9 million, almost
three times the size of the adult Communist Party.
In the postwar period, the Komsomol continued
to serve as the institutional mechanism for con-
veying ideologically approved Communist and
collectivist values to the Soviet youth. Komsomol
members were at the forefront of ideologically
driven economic campaigns, such as the Virgin
Lands Project launched in 1954. At its peak in the
1970s and 1980s, membership in the Komsomol
reached 40 million. By 1991, with the Commu-
nist system in disarray and unable to recruit any
new members, the Komsomol disbanded.

Konev, Ivan Stepanovich (1897-1973)
army commander
Konev distinguished himself in the final offensive
campaigns that led to Soviet victory in World