Czechoslovak economist who designed a 'third way' between plan and market
At the December 1967 Central Committee plenum, Šik became the first to openly demand Antonín Novotný's resignation, declaring that economic reform was impossible without political change, two decades before Gorbachev.
A Czechoslovak economist and politician who was the architect of the Prague Spring's economic reforms. His 1964 book on socialist commodity relations outlined a New Economic Model combining planning with market mechanisms, and in December 1967 he publicly denounced the Novotný regime before the Central Committee, arguing that economic reform was impossible without political change. Appointed deputy premier in Dubček's 1968 cabinet, he was on holiday in Yugoslavia when Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Prague and spent the rest of his life in Swiss exile, theorizing a 'third way' between capitalism and Soviet-style socialism.
Career Timeline
- 1940Joined the Communist Party and the anti-Nazi resistance
- 1940~1945Imprisoned at Mauthausen concentration camp
- 1961Director, Economics Institute, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences
- 1962Member, Central Committee of the KSČ
- 1968.04~1968.12Deputy Premier and coordinator of economic reforms
- 1970~1990Professor of Economics, University of St. Gallen
- 1990Economic advisor to President Václav Havel