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The Pittsburgh Agreement paved the way for the creation of the state of Czechoslovakia and was signed by a group of 20 Czechs, Slovaks, and Rusyns on May 31, 1918. The agreement, signed in the Moose Hall[1] in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, declared the intent of the American representatives of Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, and Czech Silesia, to create an independent state to be known as Czecho-Slovakia, as spelled in the document,[2] and is often compared to the United States' Declaration of Independence.[citation needed]
On October 18, 1918, the primary author of the agreement, T. G. Masaryk, declared the independence of Czechoslovakia. He was elected the first President of an independent Czechoslovakia in November 1918.
Because the biggest group of politically active Slovaks was in the United States, when the Czechs and Slovaks decided to come together in a nation state, the agreement was signed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[citation needed]
The Pittsburgh Agreement proclaimed that the groups would work for mutual independence to form one country: “Czecho-Slovakia.” The document guaranteed autonomy for Slovaks under one state including the right to create an assembly.[3] The Martin Declaration created by the Slovak National Council provided for Slovak assent in joining a united Czecho-Slovak Republic.[4] In 1920, the Constitution of the Czechoslovak Republic was adopted by the National Assembly without provision for an autonomous Slovak entity.
A subsequently signed calligraphic version[1] was donated on September 9, 2007 to the John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, at a public ceremony attended by Representatives of many Slovak and Czech cultural organizations and Sokols, as well as government officials from Slovakia, The Czech Republic, and The United States of America. This copy remains in the History Center's collection, but many copies of the calligraphic version are present in various places worldwide.
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