Universal (Latin litterae universales, meaning "universal publication directed to all") is an old legal term to define an official proclamation. It was commonly used in Poland and Ukraine. The Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union had no such word.
Displaying his knowledge of Ukraine's history, President Victor Yushchenko has recently recovered the term from dusty archives. He must have known that, split by conflicts, Ukraine has often signed agreements to unite.
Proposed by the head of state, the Universal of National Unity, also called the National Unity Pact, was a political multiparty agreement signed by the country's major political leaders on August 3, 2006 to end the parliamentary crisis. Will this document become a law one day or will it remain a mere declaration of good intentions?
Skeptics refer to the four Universals issued in 1917-1919, which all failed to unite the Ukrainian nation.
Historian Orest Subtelny analyzed objective and subjective factors that had a catastrophic impact on the fate of those documents.
When the Russian tsar abdicated in 1917, a so-called temporary cabinet was put in charge of the country. These liberals from Saint Petersburg reacted hostilely to the creation of the Central Rada, which was, in fact, Ukraine's new parliament.
The Central Rada reflected contradictions and conflicts of Ukraine's politics - political ambitiousness mixed with economic failures and military fiascos. The government was unable to restore railroads, rebuild factories, provide people with food and ensure law and order in towns and cities.
The ideologists of the Central Rada claimed that the revolution made a regular army unnecessary and dismissed 300,000 experienced soldiers who were ready to defend a new Ukraine.
The young leaders preferred to assure Ukraine's rights not with force but with words.
On June 10, 1917, they issued the First Universal proclaiming Ukraine an autonomy within Russia. The nation listened enthusiastically to the Universal in squares, hoping to live better.
The Second Universal appeared a month later and was aimed at supporting national minorities, particularly in the industrial southeast of Ukraine inhabited by Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
At that time, Ukraine had no linguistic, religious or geopolitical conflicts. Workers hoped to solve their material problems at the expense of peasants who, in their turn, demanded that lands be shared.
The Central Rada did not dare act so radically, while the Bolsheviks pledged to satisfy all social classes.
To preserve peace, the Central Rada issued the Third Universal to found the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) in November 1917. Preoccupied with daily problems, the nation showed no enthusiasm, but the Bolsheviks, who had overthrown the government in Petrograd, reacted to this demarche immediately by sending troops to Ukraine.
Then Kyiv made a desperate but belated decision to pass the Fourth Universal declaring Ukraine's independence. Unfortunately, the country had no army. Bitterly disappointed over home policies carried out by their government, citizens seemed indifferent to their independence. On January 26, 1918, the Bolsheviks invaded Kyiv.
The Germans helped the Central Rada regain power but soon disbanded Ukraine's parliament as a highly inefficient institution.
Led by Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky and later Symon Petlyura, Ukraine ended its existence as a sovereign state in 1920 due to many mistakes and unfavorable political circumstances.
Such was the dismal history of the first Ukrainian state and its legal acts at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unlike the twentieth century's universals, documents issued by the government of Rzeczpospolita and later by the government of Ukraine in 15th-18th centuries were obligatory.
In 1578, Polish King Stefan Batory legalized the Ukrainian Cossacks through his decree that triggered lots of problems in his country.
Read out in churches and at squares or sent to regiments, universals issued by Ukrainian hetmans often contained the rules of military service or urged men to join the army.
Those universals were practical and served to meet particular needs. Land universals regulated the use of land; protective universals protected rights and freedoms of the Cossacks, monasteries and temples; customs universals set fines and listed exported and imported goods; transportation universals allowed foreign diplomats and merchants to travel in Ukraine.
The great hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky signed several universals to unite the Cossacks and peasants into a powerful army in the period of the liberating war against Poland in 1648-1654.
Those universals had much pragmatic energy and revealed excellent managerial skills of their authors.
The four universals of the UNR were fateful and are still studied from the standpoint of their constitutionality.
Historian Serhiy Chalyy calls such discussions "scholastic debates." The Ukrainian universals of the twentieth century are as constitutional as the oldest part of the written British constitution called Magna Carta (the Great Charter of Freedoms). Issued by King John in 1216, it also differs considerably from modern legal acts, he says.
In 1919, the Ukrainian National Republic issued its last universal to unite Ukrainian lands, including territories once belonging to the Austrian Empire. Unrecognized by the Bolsheviks, this act later helped Stalin resolve his argument on Ukraine's post-war borders with the United States and Great Britain.
Pro-Ukrainian researchers claim this proves that western lawyers had no doubts about the legality of the universals passed by the constitutional governments, the Central Rada and the Directory.
Ukraine has approved a few important legal acts over the fifteen years of its independence: the Sovereignty Act, the Independence Act, the 1995 Constitutional Agreement and the 1996 Constitution.
Mr. Chalyy says these legal acts are based on the fundamentals of the First Universal: "The people of Ukraine are the masters of their lives on their land." He is convinced our country still follows the legal course determined in the universals of 1917-1919.
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