Incompatibility in principle of forecasting in general and...

Incompatibility in principle of forecasting in general and technological forecasting in particular with anyone authoritarian and the more so totalitarian regime at once was coming to light. At authoritarianism/totalitarianism the statement of any problem includes simultaneously also way of its decision, for which has responsibility an appropriate functionary, who is to be punished if decision has no success. It is clear, that here no problem-forecast is possible.

At once a typical Russian/Soviet problem appears: who is guilty and what to do and where authorities look? It is well known that any forecast usually reveals a challenge, on which authorities do not have an appropriate answer and which therefore is perceived as “the anti-Soviet propagation” with immediate repressive reaction.

It is clear, that at such perception almost any forecast automatically turned in the category of “secret information” and accordingly was simulated so that not to cause discontent of any authorities. It is enough to tell, that from mentioned above 500 Soviet books “on forecasting” left in the USSR in 1966-91 almost all were devoted to questions how to forecast and only few - what is predicted and that in publicise only so that to avoid a question on efficiency of existing regime.

We could remind, that one of three or four such books containing not common consideration “on the future”, but more or less concrete forecasts, though in very “conformist”, “non-problem” phrases (I. Bestuzhev-Lada: The World of Our Tomorrow, 1986) has sustained in several European countries up to ten editions, including two in FRG, two in GDR and on one in the French, Danish, Polish, Bulgarian, and Slovak languages. So great was the interest to “mysterious Soviet Futurology”.

And in Russian this book has appeared only some years after the numerous foreign publications 1984-85 and publication practically all of its chapters in many Soviet magazines 1982-85. In fact there was only one way to publish concrete forecasts: to present it under a cap of “criticism on the bourgeois futurology”. The mountain of such literature quickly has grown - dozens and dozens books out of five hundreds mentioned above, hundreds and hundreds articles.

There were two preliminary conditions for such publications: all forecasts were not to compromise the future of the USSR and “socialist camp” on the whole and were to present the agony of capitalism and non-competence of “bourgeois futurologists”.