Today, Ukrainian Jews, like all citizens of Ukraine, celebrate one of the main holidays of renewed Ukrainian statehood – Constitution Day.
The constitutional history of our country has a centuries-old tradition. The first Ukrainian Constitution – the “Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk” – was proclaimed as early as 1710 and was one of the first European constitutions of the modern era. (The oldest constitution in the world is the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from 1529, although some also classify the Magna Carta, adopted in 1215, as a proto-constitution, and the oldest constitution still in effect today is that of San Marino, adopted in 1600.)
In early 1918, after Ukraine was liberated from the yoke of the Russian Empire, the Constitution of the Ukrainian People’s Republic was adopted – the “Statute on the State System, Rights, and Freedoms of the UPR” – but, unfortunately, that period of independence of the Ukrainian State was short-lived. During the period under the yoke of the criminal Soviet regime, a number of “constitutions” were also adopted, which fixed the new enslavement of Ukraine. After Ukraine gained independence, the constitutional process initially proceeded by amending the last so-called “Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR of 1978,” and in 1995 a Constitutional Treaty was signed, which remained in effect until the adoption of a full Constitution.
The current Ukrainian Constitution was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on the night of June 27–28, 1996, under strong pressure from the second President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma. Ukraine turned out to be the last of the newly independent “Soviet republics” to adopt a new Constitution. According to the official interpretation, the adoption of the Constitution “established the legal foundations of independent Ukraine, its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and became a significant institutional step in ensuring human and civil rights, contributing to the further increase of Ukraine’s international authority on the world stage.”
However, this version of the Constitution gave the President too much power, did not sufficiently account for the need for a clear separation of powers, and established a presidential form of government in Ukraine, which, in the absence of democratic traditions, carries an additional threat of authoritarianism. In order to correct these shortcomings and direct Ukraine toward the path of European parliamentarism, with a balance of powers and prevention of the usurpation of authority, the Constitution was reformed in 2004.
Interestingly, Constitution Day is the only state holiday of Ukraine enshrined in the Constitution itself: “Article 161. The day of the adoption of the Constitution of Ukraine is a state holiday – Constitution Day of Ukraine.”
The full text of the current Constitution of Ukraine can be found here, and you can learn more about the constitutional process in our country here
We congratulate our readers on this national holiday!
