Nikolay Nikolaevich Kradin (born in Onokhoy, Buryatia, Russian SFSR on April 17, 1962) is a Russian anthropologist and archaeologist. Since 1985 he has been a Research Fellow of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology, Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok. He was Head and Professor of the Department of Social Anthropology in the Far-Eastern National Technical University (1999 - 2011), and also Head and Professor of the Department of World History, Archaeology and Anthropology in the Far-Eastern Federal University (2011 - 2016). Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 2011 and full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 2022.

Education

Major contributions

Nikolay Kradin's major contributions belong to a few fields: Among other things Kradin has demonstrated that an alternative to the state seems to be represented by the supercomplex chiefdoms created by some nomads of Eurasia – the number of the structural levels within such chiefdoms appear to be equal, or even to exceed those within the average state, but they have an entirely different type of political organization and political leadership; such type of political entities do not appear to have been ever created by the agriculturists. Kradin has written over 14 books and 500 articles dealing with his research interests. These include Nomadic Societies (1992 in Russian), The Xiongnu Empire (1966, 2001, 2002, 2020 in Russian), Political Anthropology (2001, 2004, 2010, 2011 in Russian), Chinggis Khan Empire (in co-authorship with T.Skrynnikova, 2006, 2022 in Russian), Nomads of Eurasia (2007 in Russian), Nomads of Inner Asia in Transition (2014), History of Khitans Empire Liao (in co-authorship with A.L. Ivliev, 2014 in Russian), The Great Wall of Khitan: North Eastern Wall of Chinggis Khani (in co-authorship, 2019), Nomads and World History (2020 in Russian), Origins of the Inequality, Civilization, and the State (2021 in Russian).

Selected recent publications in English