The public was well acquainted with Jouvenel...

The public was well acquainted with Jouvenel, Jungk, Meadows, Kahn, Richta , and in tune with the ideas that were then prevalent. (For instance, Miroslav Pecujlic , wrote a book The Future that Began at the same time Richta’s Civilization on the Crossroads , was published). Some of the Yugoslavs were involved in the very beginnings of international attempts to situate futures studies within a humanistic framework. Prof.

Mihailo Markovic took part in the famous Oslo meeting with Johan Galtung and Robert Jungk , and later on was one of the founders of WFSF, and for two terms its Vice-President while I was a member of the Steering Committee. In Dubrovnik, during the seventies, at the Inter-University Post-graduate Centre for several years courses in Futures Studies were offered.

However, other than public lectures, and sporadic courses at some faculties, no systematic studies of the future were established within the Yugoslav educational system. In the mid eighties Academy of Arts and Sciences Prof. Markovic organized a Committee for FS that met on a regular basis for a while, discussing problems of development and human needs. ( Mihailo Markovic ed. The needs of social development , SANU, Belgrade, 1991).

A group of engineers ( Rajko Tomovic, Slobodan Radoman ) organized around their professional organization ETAN an interdisciplinary group that dealt with visions of an all encompassed strategy of development ( S. Radoman, V. Stambuk , eds. Developing countries and paths of development , 1979). There were also attempts to launch futures research in Novi Sad (Prof. Stefan Han , Ambassador Laslo Bala , Prof. Dusan Ristic ) within the Vojvodina Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Later on, in the late eighties Prof. Han, Ristic, Markovic, Pecujlic and myself established a branch of WFSF but it never got off the ground, the crisis was pressing and interest in futures research was not extensive. Yugoslavia was also a venue of a number of conferences dealing with futures studies issues.

As an illustration, let me mention that one of WFSF was held in Dubrovnik during the Presidential mandate of Johan Galtung, the first International Seminar on Science and Technology on the Transformation of the World, as part of the project Socio-Cultural Alternatives in Changing World (UNU and Belgrade University) was held in Belgrade, as well as regular conferences Science and Society in Herceg Novi.