Abstract
In the 1960s, Radovan Richta belong among the leading representatives of social sciences in Czechoslovakia. He was the head of a team of authors of the book Civilization at the Crossroads, which after its release in 1966, aroused interest and provoked a response both at home and abroad.
The term scientific and technological revolution is inherently linked to this book and Richta's whole work. Richta claimed that the scientific and technological revolution marked a major civilization breakthrough and a start of a new phase of social development.
Richta's work also had an impact on the social and political situation in Czechoslovakia in the second half of the 1960s. Richta repeatedly pointed out that the implementation of economic reform is a necessary prerequisite for the fulfilment of the concept of the scientific and technological revolution.
He became a prominent figure in the reform movement and allegedly coined the legendary phrase about "socialism with a human face". His career continued also at the time of normalization, when he became the director of the newly established Institute for Philosophy and Sociology, a member of the Presidium of the Czechoslovak Academy of the Sciences and later also an academic.
The research into the scientific and technological revolution continued also at the new institute and under the new conditions and remained at the centre of attention. However, the tone changed considerably.
It served primarily to highlight the civilizational dominance of socialism over capitalism. While in the 1960s the interest in the scientific and technological revolution formed the ideological basis and the guiding principle of reform, during normalization this concept was used as an apology for the existing circumstances.
Radovan Richta died in 1983.