The rise and fall of the Zaporizhian Sich after under Bohdan Khmelnytsky it rebelled against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to serve the Imperial Russia. Using all available means, Moscow limited and nullified rights and freedoms of the Zaporizhian Host going as far as subjugating the free cossack nation, states the introduction. 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 independence of the new state from Russia was the primary goal of the Bendery Constitution.
Articles 1 - 5
Articles 1-3 dealt with general Ukrainian affairs. They proclaimed the Orthodox faith to be the faith of Ukraine, and independent of the patriarch of Moscow. The Sluch River was designated as the boundary between Ukraine and Poland. The articles also recognized the need for an anti-Russian alliance between Ukraine and the Crimean Khanate.
Articles 4-5 reflected the interests of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who constituted the overwhelming majority of the Bendery emigration. The Hetman was obligated:
to expel, with the help of Charles XII, the Russians from Zaporozhian territories
to grant the town of Trakhtymyriv to the Zaporozhians to serve as a hospital, and
to keep non-Zaporozhians away from Zaporozhian territories
Articles 6 - 16
Hetman
Pylyp Orlyk Articles 6-10 limited the powers of the hetman and established a unique Cossack parliament, similar to an extended council of officers, which met three times a year. The General Council was to consist not only of the general staff and the regimental colonels, but also of "an outstanding and worthy individual from each regiment."
Articles 11-16 protected the rights of towns, limited the taxation of
peasants and poor Cossacks, and restricted the innkeepers.
Charles XII, who was present in Bendery at the time, confirmed these articles, as "the protector of Ukraine."
References
^ Mahrytska, Iryna (2005-06-24). "Hetman Pylyp Orlyk and Ukraine's First Constitution". Eastern Ukrainian National University of V. Dalya. Jurisprudentia/Slovo Prosvity. Retrieved on 2006-08-17.
^ "Constitution of Bendery". Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, The. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Retrieved on 2006-08-17.
Further reading
Dogovor i postanovlenie mezhdu Get'manom Orlikom i voiskom Zaporozhskim v 1710, in Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh (Moscow 1858)
Krupnyts’kyi, B. Het'man Pylyp Orlyk i ioho politychna diial’nist’ (1672–1742) (Warsaw 1938)
Vasylenko, M. The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk, AUA, 6, nos 3-4 (1958)
Sliusarenko, A. H.; Tomenko, M. V. Istoriia Ukrainskoi Konstytytsii, "Znannia," (Ukraine 1993),
