Foreign language (FL) needs is a new interdisciplinary area of research developing between applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and educational planning and evaluation. FL needs consist of the demands, wishes, and expectations of the whole society, its groups and individuals, reflecting the relationship of their contemporary and future existence to communication in foreign languages. In Czechoslovakia, FL needs are realized through foreign language teaching, offering obligatory instruction in Russian from grade 5 and a second foreign language from grade 7. Public schools of foreign language and private lessons are also available. At the university level, Russian remains obligatory and second foreign language instruction is compulsory. Studies have found that the foreign languages used for various communicative purposes are German (43.6 percent), Russian (29.1 percent), English (14.5 percent), French (10.9 percent), and Spanish (1.9 percent). Although the choice of language is consistent across geographic areas, the communicative purposes for which they are used differ according to language. Research has found conflicting evidence on motivation for learning foreign languages; further study is recommended on issues such as distinguishing individual and societal FL needs, the relative importance of different languages and their usefulness in international communication, and the difficulty of a given foreign language for Czechoslovakians. A number of statistical tables are appended. (MSE)