The article takes a parochial academic anniversary in Britain as an occasion to reflect on ensuing changes of paradigm in social anthropology, notably the rejection of evolutionism and the neglect of history that accompanied the,fieldwork revolution' led by Bronislaw Malinowski. In the light of this discussion it is argued that the ,anthropology of postsocialism' of recent years should not content itself with ethnographic studies of transformation but would benefit from engaging more seriously with multiple layers of history as well as with adjacent social sciences. It is further argued that social and cultural anthropologists should form a common scholarly community with the ,national ethnographers', since these two styles of enquiry complement each other; but such integrated communities remain rare, in Britain no less than in east-central Europe.