Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk
The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk (Ukrainian: Конституція Пилипа Орлика, romanized: Konstytutsiia Pylypa Orlyka) or the Bender Constitution,[a] formally titled as The Treaties and Resolutions of the Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Army (Latin: Pacta et Constitutiones legum libertatumque Exercitus Zaporoviensis, Ukrainian: Договори і Постановлення Прав і вольностей Війська Запорозького, romanized: Dohovory i Postanovlennia Prav i volʹnostei Viisʹka Zaporozʹkoho), is a constitutional document written by the Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host, Pylyp Orlyk,[2] the Cossack elders and the Cossacks of the Zaporozhian Army on the 5 April 1710 in the city of Bender (Tighina) in the Principality of Moldavia.
[3][4] It established the principle of the separation of powers in government between the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches well before the publication of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws.
The preamble briefly discusses Cossack history, their Khazar and Roxolani origin mythos, the rise of the Zaporizhian Sich and its downfall when after under Bohdan Khmelnytsky it rebelled against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and ended up serving Imperial Russia.
According to the introduction, using all available means, Moscow limited and nullified rights and freedoms of the Zaporizhian Host and eventually subjugated the free Cossack nation.
Ivan Mazepa's politics and alliance with Charles XII of Sweden are explained as logical and inevitable, mandated by the need to free the homeland.
The monument is in the form of a book with engraved information about the history of the writing of the Constitution and its full name in Ukrainian and Latin.
