10 Facts About the Constitution of Ukraine: Things Not Everyone May Know About the Main Document of the Country

Today we celebrate the twenty-seventh anniversary of the Constitution of Ukraine. In his honor, we have prepared some interesting facts about the main law of the country.

1. The 1996 Constitution was not the first for Ukrainians. The predecessors of the current main document were: The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk (April 5, 1710); Constitution of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, UPR – April 29, 1918; Minor Constitution of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic (WUPR) (November 13, 1918); Provisional Constitution of Carpathian Ukraine (March 15, 1939). Incidentally, the Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk was fully called ‘Treaties and Determination of the Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporizhzhian Army’ and consisted of a preamble and 16 articles, written in Latin and Old Ukrainian. Handwritten versions (the original) of the historical document are still not in Ukraine, only in 2021 the document in Latin was delivered from Sweden for a temporary exhibition in St. Sophia Cathedral from August 16 to November 14.
2. The process of preparing the Constitution of Ukraine lasted from 1990 to 1996, and a total of 15 draft documents were proposed: from the Constitutional Commission, political parties, and scientists. Thus, for example, in Ukraine, the Communists at that time proposed in the draft Constitution to preserve the name of the Ukrainian SSR, to restore the Soviet form of government, to limit the rights of the president, and to enter the new Union. And if the version of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists was adopted, then Crimea could have lost the status of autonomy.
3. The Constitution of Ukraine could not be adopted on June 28, because on the eve of the historic meeting of the Council, the then President Leonid Kuchma issued a decree on the holding of an all-Ukrainian referendum on September 25, 1996 on the adoption of the new Constitution of Ukraine. When the people’s deputies adopted the text of the Constitution, the corresponding decree of the head of state was canceled.
4. The most heated discussions revolved around the issues of distribution of powers between branches of government, state symbols, private property, the status of Crimea and the Russian language.
5. The active period of work on the document lasted for 3 months. In March 1996, the draft document was submitted for discussion by the Constitutional Commission and recommended for consideration by Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. On April 2, the draft Constitution was included in the agenda of the meetings, and after 2 months of revision, the draft was adopted in the 1st reading. During preparation for the 2nd reading, about 6,000 amendments were made to the document. For 3 months, the Commission worked on the project without a day off from 9 in the morning until 10 in the evening, and the session of the Parliament regarding the adoption of the Main Law lasted for a day.
6. Voting in the Rada on the adoption of the Constitution was carried out on each article separately and on whole sections, and in general took place at 9:20 in the morning on June 28, 1996.
7. President Kuchma was not present at the fateful meeting of the Rada, but he came to the session hall a few minutes before the final adoption of the Constitution by the deputies.
8. On June 21, 1996, the addition of Speaker Oleksandr Moroz was adopted on the exclusive right of the people to determine and change the constitutional order and that this right cannot be usurped by the state, its bodies or officials.
9. The first miniature Constitution of Ukraine was presented in Kyiv on August 22, 2011. The constitution in miniature, measuring 21×32 mm, has 160 pages with about 9,500 handwritten letters, each of these less than 1 mm. The text of the book written in Indian ink. The miniature itself is made of special thin paper. The mini-constitution is in a case with a coat of arms. It took about 2 months to create the miniature. It was transferred to the Museum of Books and Printing.
10. In 2019, the electronic Constitution of Ukraine for children appeared on the Internet in the form of comics. The authors were the Kapranov brothers, and the artist was Oleksandr Kostenko.