It was the first fundamental law (basic law) of the Ukrainian SSR.[1] The constitution acknowledges that Ukrainian SSR and Ukraine is one and the same, particularly starting with the words in part 2, Article 6, "To the authority of the Soviet power in Ukraine are subjected:". The constitution consisted out of four parts and 35 articles.[1] The text of the constitution starts with the Article 1, "The Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic is an organization of dictatorship of working and exploited masses of proletariat and the poorest peasantry over their ages long oppressors and exploiters, capitalists and landowners". The main task of the dictatorship was ensuring "transition from bourgeois system to socialism by carrying out socialist transformations and systematic suppression of all counter-revolutionary manifestations from the side of affluent classes".[1]
Parts and articles
Fundamental provisions
Structure of Soviet power
Organization of central power
Organization of Soviet power locally
Declaration of rights and obligation of working and exploited people of Ukraine
The 1978 Constitution of the UkrSSR (Ukrainian: Конституція УРСР 1978 р.)[a] was a fundamental law of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the fourth and the last of Constitutions of the UkrSSR.[2] It was based on the 1977 Constitution of the USSR (Russian: Конституция СССР and adopted on 20 April 1978 by the extraordinary seventh sessions of Supreme Council of the UkrSSR of 9th convocation.[2] After the 1991 Ukrainian Declaration of Independence, the constitution was amended and renamed into the Constitution of Ukraine.[3] Formally, it lost its validity on 28 June 1996 with adoption of the new constitution.[2]
In its preamble, the constitution indicated on its succession of constitutional development of Ukraine, ideas and principles of which were fixed in constitutions of 1919, 1929, and 1937.[2]