Turning the pages back... March 31, 1996 (03/26/06)

Turning the pages back...

March 31, 1996

Ten years ago, in our issue dated March 31, 1996, our top story was about an alternative to the draft constitution developed by Ukraine's Constitutional Committee. "The Constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic" - which did not differ from the most recent (1978) fundamental law of the Ukrainian SSR - was signed by 125 left-wing members of Ukraine's Parliament.

Representatives of the Communist, Socialist and Agrarian factions made good on their threat to present their own version of a draft constitution, which stated that the Ukrainian SSR represents a "socialist state of the people expressing the will of the workers, peasants, working intelligentsia, of all people who have created material and spiritual values by their honest labor effort."

The alternative constitution did not include the post of president, but it did provide for a Council of Ministers as the supreme executive body of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The draft also envisaged three forms of property: citizens' (earned by labor), collective and state, and listed both Ukrainian and Russian as state languages. The trident was to be replaced by the hammer and sickle and a red five-pointed star as the coat of arms of the Ukrainian SSR. The blue-and-yellow flag was to be replaced by the old red-and-blue banner of the Ukrainian SSR.

The draft constitution that had been presented by the Constitutional Committee and submitted to Parliament was written by a group that represented all factions of Parliament. However, the left-wingers on the committee did not approve the completed draft.

The alternative Communist constitution was harshly criticized by Ukraine's national democrats, who viewed the move as a provocation pure and simple. Les Taniuk, a member of the Rukh faction in Parliament, said "This move by the left forces, in my opinion, is a farce; it is not serious. ... it comes off looking not like a drama, but like a parody."

Source: "Communists propose own version of new Constitution for Ukraine," by Marta Kolomayets, Kyiv Press Bureau, The Ukrainian Weekly. March 31, 1996, Vol. LXIV, No. 13.

| Home Page |