The Slavic people, from whom the Czechs and Slovaks originated, have inhabited the territory of 20th-century Czechoslovakia since the 5th century. The Tatar and Turkish invasions and occupations over previous countries did not kill the spirit of the Czech and Slovak people, who, divided for 11 centuries, were unified in the 20th century. Despite centuries of ethnic oppression, and Germanization and Hungarization by foreign rulers, the language, culture, and national identity of the Czechs and Slovaks have survived. The new republic of Czechoslovakia arose from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 after World War I. The accord between the Czechs and the Slovaks was ratified in the Cleveland and the Pittsburgh declarations. The founders of the republic were its first president, Tomas Masaryk, and Garrigue Milan Rastislav Stefanik. The foundation of democratic principles gave the intellectuals of the young republic a new platform of liberal ideology. Influential in the cultura...