Paper long abstract:

Proposing paper is concerned with the forecasting expertise (so called "prognostika") in the late socialist Czechoslovakia and its relationship to strategies of post-socialist transformation after 1989. In the 1980s, forecasting scholarship played an important role in the reform activities resulted in the perestroika project. Forecasting expertise produced analyzes of the late socialist reality, concrete reform proposals as well as prognoses of the future development of the country. The aim of my paper is to discuss possible connections and continuities between the 1980s prognostika expertise and the attempts to implement neoliberal agenda after 1989. Apart from evident personal continuity, knowledge produced by scholars involved in the forecasting activities and discussed in this specific milieu played certain role in the post-1989 public debates and policymaking. This paper will thus discuss following questions: What kind of knowledge about economy, society and state was produced by the late 1980s forecasting expertise? Which concepts of economy and governance were important for forecasting scholars and were used in their expertise? What from this field "survived" the collapse of state socialism in 1989? And, generally, to what extent the late 1980s "prognostika" became the laboratory of post-socialism?