Basarab M. Separatism as a Manifestation of the Crisis of National Statehood.

The thesis presents a complex research of the phenomenon of separatism. This phenomenon became ethnic context at the moment of national Renaissance in Europe in the period of the end of XVIII and beginning of the XIX century. This period was characterized by the wave of the widespread glorification of national histories, myths and personalities, formation of national historical schools, standardization of national languages etc. The process of self-consciousness possessed small and large European nations, empires and colonized peoples. The modernist and primordial approaches of study in formation and development of nations have been analyzed. Based on the modernist position the theory that modern nations formatted since the end of XVIII century primarily due to their self-consciousness the author states that the sense of modern nations are not in their objective reality but in the process of mental self-reflection. If the nation doesn't have the common collective enthusiasm of the past and most importantly if it doesn't have collective understanding the necessity of the common future, the crisis of national identity and thus the crisis of national statehood are coming. In the terms of crisis of national statehood the number of objective and subjective factors (discrimination based on ethnicity, the intervention of external forces, the activity of regional elites, difficult social and economic conditions, the results of globalization effect etc) facilitate the conflicting social groups to the process of searching the new national reasons and thereby even more to encourage them to separatist actions. In contemporary Ukraine there are problems with the national identity that arose because of the historical peculiarities of the state formation in the modern period. Despite the fact that the state doesn't resorts to ethnic discrimination, a number of favourable circumstances based on the problems with national self-consciousness created preconditions for separatism in Ukraine.