The document "Pact and Constitution of the Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporizhyan Cossack Forces" prepared by Hetman Pylyp Orlyk in 1710 is considered the first Ukrainian constitution. Historians regard it as a progressive document far ahead of its time, since the first constitutions in European countries and in the USA only began to appear some 70 years later. The "Pylyp Orlyk" constitution had never came into force because it was written outside of the country while in exile and the authors could not get back into Ukraine at the time, but nevertheless it will always remain in history as an original legal document which for the first time in European history laid the groundwork for the possibility of democratic parliamentary rule.