Translation:Constitution of the Ukrainian People's Republic

by Central Council of Ukraine

In the field of state-building, the Central Council must pay tribute from the very beginning of its emergence on March 17, 1917. For the first time in recent history, a new Ukrainian state – Ukrainian People's Republic has emerged. The Central Council needed only 8 months for the proclamation of the UPR as part of federal Russia and two more months to declare its complete independence. This historical ascent was marked by four Universals of the Central Council, each of which marked a separate stage of state formation.
The culmination of the state-building activities of the Central Council was the IV Universal. On January 22, 1918, he proclaimed the independence and independence of Ukraine, becoming the legislative basis of the new state. IV The Universal has recognized the necessary adoption of the Constitution as soon as possible: “ We instruct all our citizens to translate the elections as vigorously as possible, to raise all efforts so that the counting of votes is completed as soon as possible, that in a couple of weeks our Constituent Assembly – the highest master and governor of our land, and the Constitution of our independent Ukrainian People's Republic, may consolidate freedom, order and prosperity for the good of all the working people of it now and in the future times”.
Elections to the Constituent Assembly, which was scheduled to open on January 9-22, 1918, were postponed due to military events and were held in April and not throughout Ukraine. During this time, the parliamentary commission of the Central Council prepared a draft Constitution, which took into account the realities of Ukraine's independent status. The Chairman of the Central Council Mykhailo Hrushevsky appointed an extraordinary meeting of the Small Council on April 29, 1918 to consider the draft Constitution.
On April 29, at 17.00, a closed meeting of the Small Council began. At the beginning, Hrushevsky made a statement about the conflict with German command. After that, the members of the Council began to consider the draft Basic Law of the UPR. Arkady Stepanenko reported from the commission on drafting the Constitution. The first general reading began to read and discuss the points, after which the Constitution was adopted. Analysis of its two variants shows that the autonomist version of Mikhail Hrushevsky remained in the structure of the final text. The order and general content of the first five sections, to which the sections “National Unions ”, “On the temporary cessation of public swabids” have been added and the section on joining the Russian Federal Republic has been excluded. There is every reason for one of the authors of the final option to consider A. Stepanenko, as the well-known practice of adopting state legal acts indicates the obligation to present the document by the author or one of the authors at a parliamentary discussion.
Thus, at the last meeting of the Central Council on April 29, 1918, the draft Constitution was heard and adopted, or “Statute on the state system, rights and freedoms of the UPR”. But there was not enough time to promulgate and declare the Basic Law of Ukraine. Therefore, it did not enter into legal force and remained as an important historical and legal document of the Ukrainian state in 1917-1918.
The full text of the Constitution of the Republic of Ukraine in 1918 is provided with the preservation of stylistic and spelling features of the time.

CONSTITUTION OF THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC (Statute on the state system, rights and liberties of the UPR)

I. General Provisions

1. Restoring its state right, as the Ukrainian People's Republic, Ukraine, to better defend its land, to ensure the right and protection of the liberties, culture and well-being of its citizens, proclaimed itself and now the unity of the state is sovereign, independent and independent of no one.
2. Sovereign law in the Ukrainian People's Republic belongs to the people of Ukraine, this to the citizens of the Ukrainian People's Republic all together.
3. This sovereign right of the people is exercised through the National Assembly of Ukraine.
4. The territory of the UPR is indivisible, and without the consent of the National Assembly in 2/3 of the votes of the members present, no change can take place in the borders of the Republic or in the legal relations of a territory to the Republic.
5. Without violating its only property, the Ukrainian People's Republic grants its lands, possessions and communities the right of broad self-government, adhering to the principle of decentralization.
6. To the nations of Ukraine, the UPR gives the right to organize its cultural rights within national borders.

II. Rights of Ukrainians

7. A citizen of the UPR is considered to be every person who has acquired this right in the order prescribed by the laws of the UPR.
8. A citizen of the Ukrainian People's Republic cannot be at the same time a citizen of the latter state.
9. A citizen of the Ukrainian People's Republic may violate civil rights by applying to the Government of the Ukrainian People's Republic with the burial of the procedure prescribed by law.
10. Only a ruling of the Court of the Republic can deprive a citizen of the civil rights of a citizen of the Ukrainian People's Republic.
11. The act, civil and political legitimacy of the citizen of the Ukrainian People's Republic begins from 20 years. The law of the UPR does not know any horn in the rights and responsibilities between a man and a woman.
12. The citizen in the UPR is equal in their civil and political rights. Birth, faith, nationality, education, property, taxation do not give any privileges in them. No titles in the acts and records of the UPR can be used.
13. A citizen of the UPR and no other person can be detained in its territory without a court order, other than in a hot act. But in this case, it must be released no later than 24 hours, when the court does not establish any way to detain him.
14. A citizen of the UPR and no other in its territory can be punished by death, neither devoted to any punishment on the body, nor to other acts that diminish human dignity, nor to set fire to confiscation of property as punishment.
15. Homemade fire is prescribed intact. No audit may take place without a court order. In advanced cases, the legal protection authorities may inflict immunity and without a court order, however and in those cases the court order must be delivered to the desire of the citizen no further, as for 48 hours to complete the audit.
16. Sheet secret is installed. Public authorities are not free to open letters without a court order, other than in cases marked by law.
17. A citizen of the UPR and no other in its territory can be limited in the rights of the word, press, conscience, organization, strike, as long as it does not transgress in those decrees of criminal law.
18. Every citizen of the Ukrainian People's Republic and all other people in the territory have the freedom to change places of residence.
19. Resolutions §§ 14, 16, 17, 18 and 19 do not affect the rationing by special laws of the recess state, which can be established only each time by a separate law.
20. Only the citizen of the UPR enjoys the fullness of civil and political rights, participates in the ordination of state and local life through active and passive participation in elections to legislative institutions and local governments.
21. Active and passive right to participate in elections, both to the legislative bodies of the UPR, and to all electoral bodies of local and civil self-government, have all the citizens of the UPR, when they will be twenty years old by the day of the election act. The excavation is made by the law for the insane or insane, who come under guardianship. What punitive transgressions entail the deprivation of the right to do so by the National Assembly in the ordinary legislative order. There can be no other restrictions on suffrage. Separate resolutions on citizenship rights are regulated by the spice law.

III. State Bodies of the Ukrainian People's Republic

22. All power in the UPR comes from the people, and is exercised in the manner prescribed by this statute.
23. The supreme body of the UPR is the National Assembly, which directly exercises the highest legislative power in the UPR and forms the highest bodies of the executive and judicial nature of the UPR.
24. The highest executive power in the Ukrainian People's Republic belongs to the Council of People's Ministers.
25. The highest body of the court is the General Court of the UPR.
26. The whole kind of business is organized by the local councils and the councils of communities, possessions and lands. They have a single direct local authority: the ministers of the UPR only control and coordinate their activities (§ 50), directly and through the government officials they have identified, without interfering with the cases, those Councils and the Assignments appointed, and all disputes in these cases are resolved by the Court of the Ukrainian People's Republic (§ 60 and 68).

IV. National Assembly of the Ukrainian People's Republic

27. The national assembly is elected by a general, equal, direct, secretive and proportional vote of all those who enjoy civil and political rights in Ukraine and are not strictly restricted in them.
28. Elections must be arranged so that one deputy falls on about a hundred thousand people and so that no one has a second vote in the election. In all the other rules of elections to the National Assembly are established by law.
29. A deputy may be elected any citizen of the Ukrainian People's Republic who has passed 20 years in his or her rights. He cannot be held accountable for his political activities. During the performance of his parliamentary duties, he receives a fee in the height and in the order established by the National Assembly.
30. The election test belongs to the Judicial UPR. He passes his decisions in these cases to the National Assembly. Recognition of mandates as untrue and the abolition of elections and the appointment of new elections to their place belongs to the National Assembly.
31. Deputies to the National Assembly are elected for three years. Three years after the election day, they are wasting their power when the Assembly has not been dissolved and replaced by new ones in advance.
32. In time, the National Assembly is dissolved by the same resolution, as well as by the will of the people, revealed no less than three millions of voters, written statements passed through the communities of the Court, which, in the test of law, reports this harassment to the National Assembly.
33. New elections by resolution of the National Assembly are painted by the executive authorities. The National Assembly is wasting its fullness on the day of its transfer to the newly elected National Assembly. Between the resolution on the painting of elections and the convening of the new National Assembly, it cannot pass more than three months.
34.Convenes the National Assembly and conducts them The Chairman of them, elected by the National Assembly. The New National Assembly convenes and opens the Chairman elected by the previous National Assembly. The Government of the Chairman shall continue until the new Meeting is convened and the Chairman is elected by them. Replaces his deputy, elected by the Meeting in case of death or serious illness, until the election of a new Chairman.
35. The Chairman of the National Assembly, as their representative, shall, in the name of the Republic, be filled with all the powers associated with the representation of the Republic.
36. In the Assistant Chairman, in the cases specified in § 32—33 by the National Assembly, his comrades are selected, including those who will establish the National Assembly. One of them is selected by the Deputy Chairman.
37. The National Assembly coincides with the session no less than twice a year. There can be no break between sessions for more than three months. At the proposal made by 1/5 of the deputies, the National Assembly must be convened no later than its receipt by the Chairman.
38. To legitimize the decisions of the National Assembly, more than half of the deputies must be awarded. All cases are decided by the usual majority of those present. Only the separation of the territory, changes in the constitution, the proclamation of war and the extradition to the investigation and the court of ministers are decided by a special majority.
39.Bill drafts are submitted to the National Assembly for consideration:

a) a presidium in the understanding with the Council of the Elders of the Meeting;

b) single factions registered by the National Assembly;

c) individual deputies, the number is not less than 30;

d) Council of People's Ministers of the Ukrainian People's Republic;

e) self-governing bodies that unite no less than 100 thousand voters;

f) directly by the voters-citizens of the Republic, including not less than 100 thousand, written statements, approved through the communities and submitted to the Court, which through the passage of their rightfulness transmits this proposal to the Chairman of the National Assembly.

40. Bill drafts, introduced in the order specified in § 39, are transmitted by the Presidium of the National Assembly to the Commission and, after the report of the Commission, are finally adopted by the National Assembly. Bill drafts initiated by the Council of People's Ministers, together with the introduction to the Presidium of the National Assembly, are submitted to the attention of the Council of People's Ministers.
41. Bill drafts introduced, not adopted in one session, may be approved by a new session, but may not be approved by the National Assembly of the new composition ( after the new elections).
42. Contributions to the amendment of the Constitution are made and pass in the same order specified in § 39—41, but they require 3/5 of the deputies present, and the decision becomes valid only when this decision is renewed by the ordinary majority of the National Assembly in the new composition, after the next new election. In all the other, not specified in the Constitution, the order and activities of the National Assembly are normalized by an order that the National Assembly adopts and changes in the usual manner.
43. The laws and regulations of the National Assembly are published by them as excerpts from the minutes of their meetings, signed by the Chairman ( or his comrade ) and one of the Secretaries of the National Assembly. They are obliged from the date of receipt of them in local institutions, as they are not regulated otherwise in the law itself.
44. No taxes can be taken without a decision of the National Assembly.
45. Without a resolution of the National Assembly, no loans can be made to the account of the Ukrainian People's Republic, and no siege of state property at all.
46. A citizen of Ukraine cannot be called to compulsory military or police service other than by a resolution of the National Assembly.
47. War cannot be declared, nor can consent be concluded on behalf of the UPR without a resolution of the National Assembly. Two-thirds of the members of the National Assembly present are required to declare war.
48. The National Assembly approves treatises political and economic, concluded on the name of the UPR.
49. The National Assembly establishes units of measure, weight and coins of the UPR.

V. Council of People's Ministers of the Ukrainian People's Republic

50. As the highest executive power of the Ukrainian People's Republic (§ 22), the Council of People's Ministers regulates it with all cases that arise outside the validity of local self-government institutions (§ 24) or touch the entire UPR, coordinates and controls the activities of these institutions, without violating the law of their established competencies, and comes to their assistants when they turn to it.
51. The Council of People's Ministers derives its superiority from the National Assembly and is accountable only to them.
52. The Council of People's Ministers is formed by the Chairman of the National Assembly and by agreement with the Council of Senior Meetings, and then the Council of People's Ministers is submitted for approval to the National Assembly.
53. In the same way, a partial addition to the Council of People's Ministers is made.
54 The number of members of the Council of People's Ministers and the specialization of their portfolios are established by the National Assembly.
55. Every member of the National Assembly has the right to ask questions to the Council of People's Ministers as a whole, or to its individual members, announcing questions through the Presidium of the National Assembly.
56. The faction of the National Assembly and deputies, including at least 15, may put the Council of People's Ministers or its individual members in favor of clarifications, in the order of § 55. When the National Assembly supports such a desire by a majority vote, ministers shall, no later than seven days later, give an explanation in the People's Assembly of the Ukrainian People's Assembly — themselves or through their representatives.
57. A member of the Council of People's Ministers, to whom the majority of the People's Assembly of the Ukrainian People's Assembly will express distrust, shall constitute his superiority, and 24 hours later the National Assembly may begin to replace him in the manner specified in § 53. The same is understood of the whole Council of People's Ministers when it is expressed distrust of the whole.
58. By Resolution 2/3 of the National Assembly, members of the Council of People's Ministers may be prosecuted and tried for their activities.
59. Members of the Council of People's Ministers have the right to participate in the debate of the National Assembly with an advisory vote. Members of the National Assembly, during their stay in the Council of People's Ministers, also have only an advisory vote.

VI. Courts of the Ukrainian People's Republic

60. The court in the UPR is named after her.
61. Graduation in court must be humane and oral.
62. Judicial authorities within the framework of civil, criminal and administrative legislation are carried out exclusively by judicial institutions.
63. Judgments cannot be changed by law or by administrative bodies.
64. In which cases, administrative authorities may impose and execute the penalty —, the law only decides.
65. The Court is one and the same for all citizens of the Republic, not excluding members of the National Assembly and members of the Council of People's Ministers, with the burial of the provisions of § 58 of this law.
66. The Supreme Court of the Republic is « General Court of the UPR», angry at the panel elected by the National Assembly for five years.
67. The General Court is the highest court of cassation for all courts of the Republic and cannot be a court of first and second instance and have administrative functions.
68. In all other things, the organization and competence of the courts and the person of the penitentiary of the judiciary is established by law.

VII. National Union

69. Each of the inhabited Ukraine of nations has the right within the UPR to national-personal autonomy, this is the right to self-establishment of their national life, which is carried out through the bodies of the National Union, whose power is extended to all its members, regardless of the place and settlement in the UPR. This is an inalienable right of nations, and none of them can be deprived of or restricted in this right.
70. The inhabiting territory of the UPR to the nations — Greater Russian, Jewish and Polish — the right to national-personal autonomy is given by the force of this law. Nations of Belarus, Czech, Moldovan, German, Tatar, Greek and Bulgarian can be exercised by the right of national-personal autonomy, as the General Court will be informed of each nation in particular, signed no less than 10,000 citizens of the UPR without a hornet of straw and faith, not limited in court in their political rights, declaring their belonging to this nation. The General Court shall consider the application in a blistering hearing no later than 6 months after the date of its submission, shall notify the Council of the People's Ministers of its decision and shall declare it to the general knowledge. These statements from nations not listed in this article are submitted to the National Assembly of the UPR.
71. To exercise the rights specified in § 69, the national UPR, belonging to a given nation, form a national Union in the territory of the UPR. Members of each national union keep noun lists, which together constitute a national cadastre, which is published in the general knowledge: every citizen has the right to demand as his inclusion in this national cadastre, and exclusion from it, given the statement of his non-belonging to this nation.
72. The National Union enjoys the right of law and governance within the competence, which is precisely established in the order specified in § 75 of this law. The National Union has exclusively the right to represent a nation that lives in the territory of the UPR before state and public institutions. Bill rulings issued by the National Assembly within the competence of the national Union (§ 75) belong to the announcement in the prescribed manner.
73. From the general meeting of the Ukrainian People's Republic and local self-government bodies, the national Union is at the disposal of the cases in which it is responsible, from the amounts generally assigned to these cases, certain parts, proportional quantities of members of this national union.
74. The National Union shall establish its annual budget and shall be entitled to a) taxation of its members on grounds established for national taxation; b) under its responsibility to make loans and take other financial measures to ensure the validity of the National Union.
75. The scope of cases falling within the competence of the National Union and its individual bodies, as a level and the system of institutions, is preceded by a resolution of the Constituent Assembly of this nation, which at the same time warns the procedure for changing their resolutions. The adopted resolutions, which affect the scope of competence of the national union, belong to the consideration and approval of the National Assembly of the UPR.
NOTE. The inconsistencies that may arise in this regard between the national Constituent Assembly and the People's Assembly of the Ukrainian People's Republic are sanctified by a conciliation commission, which consists of a single number of representatives from these institutions. The resolutions of the conciliation commission are transferred to the final approval of the National Assembly of the Ukrainian People's Republic.
76. National Constituent Assembly is formed from members elected by the citizens of the UPR, who have been elected for 20 years, on the basis of a common, without a hornet of straw and a faith of equal suffrage, through direct elections and secret ballot, with the pretense of the principle of proportional representation.
77. The bodies of the national union are state bodies. The highest representative body of the national union is the National Assembly, which will be elected by the members of the union on the basis specified in § 76. The highest executive body of the union is the National Council, which is governed by the National Assembly and is accountable to them.
78. All disputes over the issue of competence that will arise between the bodies of the national union, on the one hand, and the bodies of state government, local self-government and other national unions, on the other hand, are resolved by the administrative court.

VIII. Temporary Suspension of Basic Rights

79. In the case of state cones ( during war or internal unrest) may civil liberties be restricted and often terminated.
80. Which civil liberties and to what extent they should be terminated should then mean a spice law issued in the ordinary course.
81. Establishment of temporary termination of civil liberties of whose restrictions in the cases and limits presented by the mentioned in § 80 laws are approved by the National Assembly.
82. When the National Assembly is not convened, the Council of People's Ministers may suspend civil liberties on its own, with the obligation to present its order at the first meeting of the nearest session of the National Assembly.
83. The cessation of public swabids may not last longer than three months, and the continuation must then be approved by the National Assembly.

Ukrainian Central Council *.

• The text is submitted for: Hristyuk P. Notes and materials on the history of the Ukrainian revolution

1917—1920 — T. II .— Vienna, 1921.— C. 175—180.