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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Futures Studies in the European Ex-socialist Countries FUTURES STUDIES IN SLOVAKIA Stefan Zajac Futures studies before 1989 Futures studies in Slovakia[^21] , as a part of the former Czechoslovakia, from its very beginning, were linked with economic planning. The term used in Czechoslovakia, was “prognostics”, which considered futures studies as the crucial process preceding the formation of a long-term socio-economic outlook.

The foundations of socio-economic planning were laid according to the regularities of the advanced scientific-technological progress. Of course, forecasting and planning differed in levels of objectivity and complexity but they were necessarily tied. According to a dialectic-materialist outlook, the future was, in principle, stochastic and not simply a projection of the past.

Therefore, planners and researchers in Czechoslovakia were concentrated on the analysis of scientific and technological processes and on their societal consequences (societal progress).

This view of the role and objectives of forecasting was shared by the authorities responsible for planning until the end of the socialist regime in Slovakia, although for many years works on global social-economic forecasting were carried on in different research institutes, especially in the Slovak Academy of Sciences. In the midst of the 1960s, another type of futures studies was launched by the team led by Radovan Richta from the Institute of Philosophy of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

Their investigation resulted in the famous book “Civilisation on the Crossroads”, which characterised the post-second war period as the advent age of a scientific and technological revolution, generating a new technical and economic paradigms, as well as a new way of life.

The analysis was so convincing that the idea of the scientific and technological revolution, of the transformation of science into a productive factor was generally accepted and even incorporated in official political speeches, and the acceleration of science and technology activities was considered as one of the priority tasks under socialism.

A new phase in the evolution of the futures studies in Slovakia began in the early eighties, namely in 1983, when the government decided to carry out a global social and economic forecast of Czechoslovakia, including Slovakia, up to the year 2010.