The dissertation is the systemic scientific historical and ethnological complex research of the peculiarities of the customary-law culture of the Ukrainians in the XIX - beginning of the XX century. The theoretical questions of correlation between the custom and the law are resolved, the conclusions about the fundamental difference between the law and the custom, about the specific peculiarities of the custom - its mobility, high adaptivity to the social and economic changes, political conditions are made on the basis of the analysis of the historical, ethnolinguistic, historic and legal material, comparison of Russian, Austrian and Austro-Hungarian legislation of the XIX century with the practice of the volost courts, public local authorities, as well as the peasants opinion-polling results. Study of the new sources - Ukrainian, Russian and Polish - and application of the modern methodological and methodical principles of the research (including the method of empathy giving the possibility to look at the folk culture with the eyes of its bearers) gave the possibility to reveal a number of the most important fundamental questions of ethnic specificity of the Ukrainian legal culture. The research of the specificity of the folk sense of justice and its manifestations in concrete customary-law practice of the Ukrainian peasantry in the XIX - beginning of the XX century is conducted by means of the analysis of the folk legal terminology dictionary and specific linguistic constructions. The peculiarities of the Ukrainian customary property institute, first of all land property, are analyzed. The research of the Ukrainian land relations, historical forms of the land property, the homestead land ownership and the mutational forms of communal land ownership in separate regions of Ukraine is conducted. The fundamental difference between the Russian land commune and the Ukrainian institute of the community is underlined. The folk legal conceptions of the Ukrainian peasantry about the common property, which were implemented in the specific forms of the non-arable lands, forests and water resources use, are researched. The stereotype of the common property showed at the stage of common - by landlords and peasants - use of the land until the agrarian reform, as well as in servitude arguments, which appeared in the post-reform period in the Western and the Right-bank Ukraine. In the family sphere of the customary-law culture of the Ukrainian peasantry the customs of the property division and succession, the so-called "women law" and its specificity in the Ukrainian patriarchal village are researched. The especially developed on the soil of the Ukrainian social relations institute of hosting the son-in-law, aged relatives by the family and adoption is analyzed. The original folk economic customs of the Ukrainians are researched at the angle of their economic necessity. The peculiarities of the family and non-family contract economic customs are revealed. The theoretical and practical questions connected with the so-called"landlord" law current in the Ukrainian pre-reform reality, which was implemented in local variants of existing of the contract relations between the landlord (its economy) and the peasants, are raised. The process of incorporation of the ancient foreign ethnic customs into the customary-law culture of Ukrainians is researched on the example of the Chinsh law, which showed especially brightly in Podolia and in the South of Ukraine. The territorial boundaries of the research embrace all ethnic lands of the Ukrainians. It gave the possibility to reveal both the all-Ukrainian customs existing models and their local specificity. The basic characteristics of the folk customary culture and the ethnopsychological constants of the Ukrainians are correlated.
