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The Czech National Museum is preparing a major joint exhibition with the Slovak National Museum to mark the centenary in 2018 of the foundation of Czechoslovakia, the news site iDnes.cz reported. The exhibition will open in Bratislava before transferring to Prague in October.

The show will focus on Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and other important figures in Czechoslovakia’s foundation but will also feature the stories of ordinary citizens.

The joint exhibition will be just one of a number of events in 2018 marking not only the centenary of Czechoslovakia but also the 50th anniversary of the Soviet-led invasion and 25 years since the formation of the independent Czech Republic.

On the 49th anniversary of the Soviet invasion, then Czechoslovak Radio chief Karel Lanský recalls that fateful time.

Czech Radio has brought readers rare, as yet unpublished photographs of the 1968 Russian-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. The photos were taken by Polish geologist Leszek Sawicki who was attending a conference in Prague at the time and was trapped in the capital city for several days after the invasion. Mr. Sawicki died earlier this year and the photos have come to Czech Radio courtesy of his wife who discovered them among his belongings.

This August 21 marks the 49th anniversary of the Russian-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Wenceslas Square in Prague has been a pivotal location throughout Czech history, and that certainly applies to 1968, when Soviet tanks symbolically “conquered” Czechoslovakia by taking over this thoroughfare. Jan Urban is a journalist, teacher and author. He was just seventeen years old at the time of the invasion. He joined me at the bottom of Wenceslas Square to think back on those turbulent and painful days that marked the end of the Prague

A new book by Czech historians specifies the number of victims of the 1968 Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia. According to the book, called Occupation 1968 and its Victims, a total of 137 Czechs and Slovaks died as a result of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and 400 people in the following years.

Professor Igor Lukeš teaches at Boston University and has written extensively on modern Czech history, the Cold War and contemporary developments in Central and Eastern Europe. When we spoke recently the conversation took in everything from his increasingly sympathetic view of Neville Chamberlain to his own arrival in New York in the late 1970s. But I first asked the renowned historian about his early life in communist Czechoslovakia.

The Czech Republic and Slovakia will unite next year to celebrate two major anniversaries: 100 years since the foundation of Czechoslovakia and the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Prague Spring and its subsequent crushing by Soviet-led forces. The celebrations are set to be bigger than ever, with nearly 200 events scheduled to take place over the course of the year.

Czechs are marking the 48th anniversary of the self-immolation of student Jan Palach, a brave protest against the loss of freedom and gradual apathy following the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. One of the most painful moments of the country’s modern history, Palach’s suicide remains a powerful memento that democracy must be nurtured and defended.

Moscow has accused the West of waging a propaganda war against Russia and is considering setting up a centre where historians who would compile a “correct” interpretation of history as seen by the Kremlin. One of the milestone events which have reportedly been “misinterpreted” is the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The sad news was announced on Wednesday that the most successful ever Czech Olympic athlete, Věra Čáslavská, died at the age of 74. She had been battling cancer of the pancreas. The gymnast will be remembered not just for her medals but for her protest against the Soviet bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia at the 1968 Mexico Olympics.