On the basis of the analysis of the theoretical and source base, the specifics of the appearance of conservatism as a legal doctrine and legal ideology are revealed, three types of conservative state-legal thought of the 19th-20th centuries Ukrainians are distinguished, within which the content of the national state was determined, namely, traditional, clerical, national-monarchical. It is proven that conservatism, as a direction of legal ideology and state-legal thought, is traditional for Ukrainians, was formed under the influence of European state-law ideas, but developed parallel to them, focusing exclusively on the traditional structure of political life, state forms, and a set of values. It has been established that the ideological foundations of Ukrainian conservatism were formed by I. Vyshenskyi, P. Mohyla, P. Yurkevich in the 19th century. they were implemented in traditional and conservative directions. It has been established that each of the directions of Ukrainian conservatism that we have singled out has common and distinctive ideas. Common is the idealization of the role of Christian ethics and morality, the need for a national elite, as well as a single national idea, which necessarily provided for the restoration of sovereignty. Distinctive features were the vision of the form of the state system and the legal regime. For representatives of the traditional and national-democratic direction, the concept of monarchical power and authoritarian regime was dominant, and for the clerical direction, either monarchism or a republic, but in any case, not an authoritarian model. It was established that it was the traditionalist type of conservatism that was the condition for the emergence of the idea of conciliarness, as a means of unity of ethnic Ukrainian lands, and therefore restoration of sovereignty. The local nature of clerical conservatism was the reason for the establishment of the concept of the exclusive role of Christian ethics and morality. Instead, the so-called national-monarchical conservatism, which was initiated by V. Lypinskyi and developed by S. Tomashivskyi, envisaged the idealization of the monarchical form of government traditional for Ukrainians in the form of a hereditary hetmanate, observance of moral and ethical values, a universal national idea, and a politically conscious elite. The reasons why the ideas of national monarchism proposed by V. Lypinsky did not receive support in the conditions of the existence of the Ukrainian state of P. Skoropadskyi in 1918 were determined. As a proposal for the implementation of conservative values in today's conditions, it is suggested to use the idea of “decolonization”, which allows to ensure a gap between the Soviet state-legal past and the present, “spirituality”, which involves a set of moral and ethical norms and principles, as well as “the understanding of the state as a value” – borrowing the ideas of nationalism, which appeals to the existence of a common culture, spirituality and tradition of state-building.
