Et n’oublions pas le Goofus Bird, oiseau qui vole en arrière car il ne se soucie pas de savoir où il va, mais d’où il vient. (J. L. Borges, Le livre des êtres imaginaires.) Anniversaries can be an occasion or a pretext to look back and reflect upon the past and present. This is even more the case when – as in the case of the Czechoslovak ‘eights’: 1918, 1938, 1948, 1968 and 1989 (almost an eight) – we are faced with a combination of historical turning points to be examined simultaneously, and when questions about their interplay are to be confronted. Each generation, aware of the debates of the previous one (or in reaction to them), tends to reformulate