The true goal of the founders of multinational Czechoslovakia, created in 1918, was to change it into a racially pure Slavic national state, and they already took steps in the inter-war years to achieve this aim. The real opportunity, however, for President Eduard Benes's Czech Government-in-Exile in London, came at the end of World War II. Based on Pan-Slav solidarity, they had also the Soviet Union's backing for the accomplishment of their plan.