ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the analysis of official and unofficial futures research in Communist Romania during the 1970s and 1980s. It begins with an analysis of the historical and political context in which futurology emerged and developed in Romania. The chapter then emphasizes the importance of the relative liberalization of regime control in the early years of Nicolae Ceausescu's regime. The essence of Ceausescu's miniature Cultural Revolution, as it has been called in the Romanian historiography, was the strengthening of the role of the Party in Romanian society and the subordination of all domains of social activity under Marxist-Leninist ideology. Finally, the chapter focuses on the personal story of Mihai Botez, one of the leading Romanian futurologists, who at the end of the 1970s crossed over the border of official forecasting into the production of unofficial futures of the communist system.
