Kushnir N. Legal culture in the first Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938).

After formation of the first Czechoslovak Republic as an independent democratic state formation of a high level of legal culture of its people became necessary. The present day Ukrainian society faces the same problem and one of the main directions of its state policy is improvement of the level of legal culture. A great number of scientists are investigating the problems of legal culture however there is still no agreement as to the definition of this concept. Such uncertainty complicates analysis of legal culture of society and means for its improvement. Considering the above this dissertation performs a theoretical methodological analysis of the notions of "legal culture", "legal culture of society", "social legal culture" and clearly distinguishes them. Based on the object of research the author of the dissertation marks out the structure of legal culture of society, examines it as a complex system phenomenon, the elements of which are independent system formations, describes the criteria applyingwhich the level of legal culture of a society may be clearly identified at each stage of its development. In order to select the most effective way for improvement of the legal culture in Ukraine essential is consideration of traditions and experience of European states. One of the outstanding examples of a highly organized democratic state formation was Czechoslovak Republic, the society built upon respect to human rights and citizen rights regardless of the nationality, language, religion, which took root and adhered to the principles of democracy and humanism. The author of the dissertation analyses the state of insurance and realization of human rights and freedoms, the level of minority rights protection in Czechoslovak Republic of 1918-1938, since these showings are the main criteria for describing the level of legal culture development. Analyzed are normative acts of the interwar Czechoslovakia which were related to protection of human rights and freedoms, examined are the reasons for great attention of legislators to the problems of minority rights protection. In order to determine the level of legal culture of the interwar Czechoslovakia (1918-1938) the research of the dissertation provides a detailed description of the development of its institutional, subjective and normative elements, analyses the factors which had a negative or positive impact on the process of development of these elements. Considering the fact that formation of legal culture in our society is presently at its initial stage, it is proposed to take for a model certain methods of its improvement which were used by the first Czechoslovak Republic and apply them for improvement of this process in Ukraine.