The article investigates into the right of the people to resist oppression as one of the main components in the list of political rights and freedoms of citizens.

The purpose of the article is to present the content of the concept “the right of the people to resist oppression”. The author argues that in the historical perspective the people have always had a natural, unconditional and unconstrained right to resist oppression. However, there has always been the question of this right’s legalization and recognition at the constitutional and international levels. The author gives several examples of international documents and constitutions of particular states which already have such recognition. Several examples of constitutional legalization of the right to resist oppression are reviewed in terms of protection of democracy.

 The Constitution of Ukraine is analyzed from the perspective of the right of a citizen to resist oppression, particularly, it is noted that the Constitution has enshrined the right of the people to resist oppression via specific provisions of its separate articles. Its two components are considered: what oppression of the people is and what resistance of the people to oppression is. The article also explores the factors, means and forms of oppression of the people and the legal forms, means and methods of resistance thereto.

The first factor indicating the state of oppression is the material and spiritual, cultural position of citizens in society. Here, large groups of persons are meant who vary based on their place in the social production system, their attitude to the means of production, their role in the social arrangement of labor, and the ways and sizes of the share in social wealth which they have at their disposal.

Another no less obvious and apparent form of oppression of the people in Ukraine has become corruption which is widespread and permeates all the pores of the State mechanism. Corruption has become the norm, not the exception, for the political, ruling and economic elite and has turned into a system-forming factor.

The author concludes that the purpose of resistance by the people to oppression is the establishment of real democracy in the interests of the people. The people are not only a source of power according to the Constitution of Ukraine (article 5), but also an active force, a guarantor of democratic, law-abiding and socially-oriented democracy. Democracy and the right of the people to resist oppression are organically related categories which the people implements in the course of its historical development.