'A Second Party in Our Midst': The History of the Soviet Scientific Forecasting Association

Abstract

The growth in popularity of Soviet forecasting research during the latter part of the 1960s was a positive by-product of the lingering mood of economic and administrative reform prevalent in the USSR until the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Novel forecasting programmes under Soviet academic auspices gave rise to an ill-fated Soviet Association of Scientific Forecasting, whose activities and publications helped popularize futures research to a wider Soviet scientific and technical audience. The Organization's promoters even went so far as to offer its services to State planning authorities as an independent body of expertise regarding the unforeseen consequences of planning and management decisions. The controversial programmes in question were soon dismantled on ideological as well as political grounds. The further elaboration of a critically minded, policy science-oriented futures research in the Soviet Union was henceforth proscribed under new guidelines that subordinate Soviet forecasting work to the immediate needs of the regime.