The young Kyiv historian Oleksandr Alfiorov (Institute of Historical Education, Mykhailo Drahomanov National Pedagogical University) has discovered the only
known eighteenth-century Ukrainian-language version of Hetman Pylyp Orlyk’s
Constitution of 1710. He found the document in the winter of 2009 while
examining an unsorted collection of “Files on Ukraine” at the Central Russian
Archive of Older Documents in Moscow.
The Orlyk Constitution was adopted by Cossacks
meeting in exile near the small town of Bendery (in present-day Moldova). Alfiorov’s find
refutes the suggestion that the Constitution, hitherto known only in a Latin
original and copies, was a forgery. It would now appear that the Ukrainian
version of the Constitution was secretly kept at Zaporozhian Sich (the
headquarters of the Zaporozhian Cossacks on the lower Dnipro River) until 1775,
when it was seized, along with other documents, by the Russian troops who
destroyed Sich in that year.
The Orlyk Constitution is regarded as the first
in the world to establish the separation of government powers into legislative,
executive, and judicial branches. The document consists of a preamble and
sixteen articles, and the Ukrainian state is variously referred to in the text
as Ukraine, Little Russia, and the Zaporozhian
Host. According to the Constitution, legislative power was vested in the
General Council (parliament), which was to hold three annual sessions—at
Christmas, Easter, and the Feast of the Holy Protection. The hetman and
the General Staff Council constituted the executive branch, while legal matters
fell under the jurisdiction of the General Court. Provision was also made for
local self-government on the basis of international (Magdeburg) law, which was
gradually restricted by the tsarist administration. Thus, the Ukrainian
constitution of 1710 preceded those of the United States (1787), France (1791), and Poland (1791). Although it was
not implemented because of unfavourable political circumstances, it attested to
the progressive intentions of the Cossack elite.
Along with the Constitution, Alfiorov found the
document of Hetman Pylyp Orlyk’s oath on the Gospel acknowledging the
inviolability of the adopted law, as well as a charter from King Charles XII of
Sweden acknowledging Orlyk’s
election as hetman and the validity of the Constitution. There is also a letter
from Charles XII to the commander (otaman) of Zaporozhian Sich,
Yakym Bohush, assuring the Cossacks of his intention to continue the war
against Muscovy.
The Constitution was written in the Middle
Ukrainian (Ruthenian) chancery language that was in use in the early Eighteenth
Century. The margins of the document discovered by Alfiorov contain handwritten
Russian translations of many words, showing that the Ukrainian language was not
readily comprehensible to contemporary Muscovite officials.
As Oleksandr Alfiorov acknowledged, the copies of
documents that he brought from Moscow were almost confiscated
by Russian custom officials at the border. On June
18, 2009 the historian presented his find to the Museum of the Hetmanate
in Kyiv and held a press conference. The Constitution is now on display in the
exhibition “Pylyp Orlyk, Author of the First Constitution of Ukraine.” The text
is to be published soon, and Charles XII’s letter to the Zaporozhian Cossacks
is to appear in a bilingual (English and Ukrainian) Ukrainian-Swedish anthology
based on the exhibition “Ukraine and Sweden at the Crossroads of
History”.
This historic discovery was made possible by the
financial support of the Kowalsky Program for the Study of Eastern Ukraine at
the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. The program is
supported by the Michael and Daria Kowalsky Endowment Fund, established in Toronto in 1987, whose purpose
is to revive Ukrainian studies in Eastern Ukraine. Major components of the
program include the Kowalsky Eastern Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the
Karazin National University of Kharkiv, the Canada-Ukraine Baturyn
archaeological project, an annual contest of student papers, research grants,
and the journal Skhid-Zakhid (East-West).
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studie