МОДЕЛЬ ГЕТЬМАНСЬКОЇ ДЕРЖАВИ ПАРЛАМЕНТСЬКОГО ТИПУ В КОНСТИТУЦІЇ ПИЛИПА ОРЛИКА

Abstract

In an article on the basis of a historical and legal analysis of the Constitution of Philip Orlyk in 1710, an attempt was made to investigate the model of the hetman state of the parliamentary type.It is argued that the constitutional foundations of the Ukrainian state-building at the turn of the Middle Ages and early modern times should be the separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial, parliamentarism and republicanism.This constitutional act, adopted  on April 5 (16) 1710 by the Cossack emigrant council in Bender (now the Republic of Moldova), is a significant milestone for the establishment of Ukrainian statehood at the turn of the Middle Ages and early modern times.The historical and legal significance of Pylyp Orlyk's Constitution is that it defined the foundations of a socio- political system in Ukraine in the form of a parliamentary-type Hetman state with a clear delineation of power and definition of the duties and powers of Hetman and the General Council.Written almost 80 years before the US Constitution, the Constitution of Philip Orlik absorbed the heritage of European legal opinion, was a step towards the separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial. It also had such democratic foundations as a collegial form of government at all levels, universal suffrage (true, only for men), and restrictions on arbitrariness in taxes.At the same time, the Constitution of Philip Orlik contained characteristic for his time the sanctity and inviolability of the privileges of the Cossack elite, the inadmissibility of spreading non-Orthodox denominations in the state. Pylyp Orlyk's constitution was not put into practice, but it is an outstanding monument of Ukrainian law in its content.The very fact of the appearance of this constitutional act, created by prominent Ukrainian politicians and lawyers, attests that the progressive part of the Ukrainian elite understood well the importance of representative democracy in state life.