Abstrakt
The study deals with the position of the Forecasting Institute (FI) of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences as a subplot in the Czech media discourse about the Velvet Revolution and the post-1989 transformation of the Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic. It first shows the origins and premises of the post-1989 media interest in the institute.
Second, using selected newspaper articles, it analyses how the FI gained its place in the liberal romantic narrative about the Velvet Revolution at the beginning of the 1990s, and eventually disappeared from it. It also shows its use in the satirical narrative of betrayal.
Finally, it investigates its reappearance especially in the 2010s and how it is connected to cracks in the post-1989 discursive hegemony. The partial inclusion of the story of betrayal through satirical elements of scepticism and relativism in this subplot made it possible to revaluate the post-1989 Czechoslovak and Czech development, which did not fully correspond to the original assumptions present in the romantic narrative while retaining the rest of the story.