Kotsur L. National Minorities of Ukraine in ethno-political processes in the late 1980s - in the 1990s.

This dissertation focuses on the study of integration of national minorities in Ukraine into Ukrainian political nation. The study presents an objective assessment of the effectiveness of Ukrainian ethno-political management. It elaborates a number of practical recommendations for authorities in the field of ethnic policy. The thesis reviews the most current research in the historiography concerning the problem of the politicization of national minorities in Ukraine. It presents a complex of main groups of sources such as archival documents, published research of both domestic and foreign scientists, newspaper and magazine periodicals. A number of methods of history, historiography, political science, nobeleology, sociology, social psychology, and statistics are employed. The study also involves analogy, comparative-historical, behavioral, content analysis, dialectical methods and others. A special group of methods includes game theory by John Forbes Nash, correlated equilibrium concept by Yisrael Aumann, Daniel Kahneman's developments in the field of "affective forecasting" and hierarchy analysis method. The legal framework in the regulation of social and political activity of national minorities has been analyzed. Special attention is paid to the regulations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which created conditions for the participation of national minorities in the political process. It has been found out which regulations governed international relations in the first years of independence Ukraine and how they influenced the politicization of ethnicity. The study displays the role and place of the Constitution of Ukraine in the life of national minorities and their attitude to the basic law of Ukraine. The process of realizing the interests of national minorities in the political life in Ukraine in the late 1980s and the 1990s of the twentieth century has been examined. The reasons for their participation in social and political movements of Ukraine in the late 1980s and the 1990s have been analyzed.