Whereas the United States has been enriched by the Czechs, Slovaks, and others who emigrated to the United States from the territories of what are today the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic, and continues to benefit from the strong ties between and among the citizens of our countries; Whereas Slovaks and Czechs in the United States called for a Czechoslovak state to be established in the 1915 Cleveland Agreement and the 1918 Pittsburgh Agreement; Whereas the United States profoundly contributed to the founding of an independent Czech-Slovak state when, on January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson called for the free autonomous development of the peoples of Austria-Hungary in the Fourteen Points address to a joint session of Congress; Whereas the people of the present-day Czech Republic and the people of the present-day Slovak Republic proclaimed independence on October 28, 1918, and October 30, 1918, respectively, forming the common state of the Republic of Czechoslovakia; Whereas, on November 12, 1918, the United States and an independent Czechoslovakia established formal diplomatic relations; Whereas Czechoslovakia maintained its democracy throughout the interwar period until the Nazi invasion in 1938; Whereas, in February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia seized power from the postwar democratically elected Government of Czechoslovakia; Whereas, on August 20, 1968, 20 Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military divisions invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring , a period of greater political and economic liberty that followed the appointment of Alexander Dubček as First Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party; Whereas the independent civic initiative Charter 77 was established in 1977 and called on the Czechoslovak Government to fulfill its human rights commitments under the Helsinki Final Act, and many of its members played decisive roles in the Velvet Revolution