From Pylyp Orlyk to 1996: Ukraine's Constitutional Traditions Explained

Ukraine's modern Constitution dates from 1996, but the idea that power should be limited by written rules has much deeper roots in Ukrainian history. Ukrainians frequently trace that tradition back to 1710, when a Cossack hetman in exile signed a remarkable document that sought to balance the authority of a ruler with the rights of his community. The story of how that idea travelled through the centuries helps explain why constitutional values carry such symbolic weight in Ukraine today.

The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk

In April 1710, in the town of Bender, then part of the Ottoman Empire, Cossack officers elected Pylyp Orlyk as hetman. Orlyk had served as general chancellor under Hetman Ivan Mazepa, and after Mazepa's death the Cossack leadership in exile chose him as successor. On the occasion of his election, Orlyk and the officers concluded an agreement known as the Pacts and Constitutions of Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Host.

The document was drafted in Latin and in the old Ukrainian chancery language of the time. It set out the relationship between the hetman, the Cossack officer class and the wider Cossack community. Among its key ideas were:

• Limits on the hetman's power. The hetman was not to rule alone but in consultation with representative bodies.
• A general council. A General Council of officers, colonels and delegates from the regiments and the Zaporozhian Sich was to meet regularly, three times a year, at Christmas, Easter and the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God.
• Accountability of officials. The text addressed the abuse of office, fair taxation and protection of ordinary people, including widows and orphans, from excessive burdens.
• Separate spheres of authority. Judicial matters were to be handled by courts rather than decided personally by the hetman.

Because Orlyk spent his life in exile, the document was never put into practice on Ukrainian territory. Nevertheless, historians regard it as an important expression of early European ideas about limiting executive power, and in Ukraine it is often described with pride as one of the first constitutions of its kind.

Constitutional ideas in the Cossack era and beyond

The Orlyk document did not appear from nowhere. The Cossack Hetmanate had developed its own traditions of elected leaders, councils and agreements with neighbouring rulers that defined the rights of the Cossack state. Later, during the nineteenth century, Ukrainian thinkers in the Russian and Austrian empires discussed federalism, civil liberties and national self-government. The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Kyiv, active in the 1840s, and later political theorists such as Mykhailo Drahomanov developed ideas about a free union of peoples and the protection of individual rights.

The constitutions of 1918

The collapse of empires at the end of the First World War gave Ukrainians a chance to build their own state institutions. On 29 April 1918 the Central Rada adopted the Constitution of the Ukrainian People's Republic. It proclaimed a parliamentary republic in which supreme power belonged to the people and was exercised through an elected All-People's Assembly. It guaranteed civil rights, equality before the law and protection for national minorities.

The same day, however, a change of power brought Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi to the head of the state, and the 1918 constitution never came into force. In the western Ukrainian lands, the West Ukrainian People's Republic adopted its own provisional basic law in November 1918. Both documents remain important symbols of the attempt to establish Ukrainian statehood on democratic foundations.

The Soviet period

During the Soviet era, the Ukrainian SSR had a series of constitutions, adopted in 1919, 1929, 1937 and 1978. Formally they described a sovereign republic with its own legislature, but in practice real power lay with the Communist Party and the central authorities in Moscow. These texts declared many rights on paper while offering little protection in reality.

The 1978 constitution nonetheless played a practical role at the end of the Soviet period. It was amended repeatedly after 1990 and served as the legal framework of independent Ukraine until a new constitution could be agreed.

The 1996 Constitution as heir to a tradition

When the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Constitution of Ukraine on 28 June 1996, its preamble referred to the centuries-long history of Ukrainian state-building. Many of the ideas discussed in earlier eras, such as limits on executive power, representative institutions, independent courts and guaranteed rights, are now part of the binding law of the land.

Today the legacy of Pylyp Orlyk is regularly recalled in public discussions about the constitutional order. Whether viewed as a legal precedent or as a symbol, it reminds Ukrainians that the search for a fair balance between rulers and citizens has been part of their history for more than three centuries.