ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the scholar field and analyzes its development from the late 1960s to 1989. The chapter examines the emergence of prognostika in the aftermath of the 1968 Prague Spring. It deals with connections and discontinuities between a previous wave of futurological studies in the late 1960s and subsequent developments, which led to the establishment of prognostika as a centralized system of future-oriented forecasting expertise in the service of the late socialist regime. The emergence of this particular forecasting expertise in direct relationship to political power in the 1970s is described. The chapter discusses forecasting in the perestroika period and is concerned with the critical turn in economic forecasting. This chapter follows the development of future studies in Czechoslovakia from the collapse of reform communist scholarship after 1968 to the construction of new, future-oriented project in the perestroika period that remained critical of communism but was focused on economic liberalization.
