Pylyp Orlyk’s Constitution

On April 5, we celebrate 315 years since the exiled hetman, the first leader of Ukrainian political emigration, Pylyp Orlyk, drafted a document called “Pacts and Constitution of the Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Army…” in the city of Bendery (then the Ottoman Empire, now the territory of the Republic of Moldova). It was not a Constitution in the usual sense. It was a kind of social contract that reflected the desire of the authorities and society to come to an agreement with each other. Orlyk’s Constitution declared the elective nature of the position of hetman, his limits of influence, and defined the Council of the Zaporozhian Army as the highest authority. The main idea of ​​the document: “Ukraine on both sides of the Dnieper River must be forever free from foreign domination.”

The text of the Constitution was drafted in Old Ukrainian and Latin. The course of constitutional ideas was a logical consequence of the development of the national state-building of Ukrainians from the princely times to the most relevant meanings of the Cossack-Hetman state.

At the Department of Social Sciences (head of the Department of Social Sciences (Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor Olha Sikorska), Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor Tetiana Podkupko organized a discussion on the basic principles of the constitutional process of the time of Pylyp Orlyk with higher education seekers of groups E111 and E120 of the Medical Faculty.

Constitutional processes take place in the context of state-building. While the country is developing, laws, habits, everyday life and cultural life are being modernized. Modern Ukrainian constitutionalism is in the stage of formation and development. The process is based on the achievements of both modern domestic state-builders and political figures, as well as scientists and politicians of the past. Development, features of domestic constitutional thought of the second half of the 17th – 18th centuries. does not lose its relevance to this day.

Podkupko Tetyana Leonidivna
Candidate of History, Associate Professor of the Department of Social Sciences