Terlyuk I. Ukrainian national statehood: formation of state and legal tradition (second half of XVI – beginning of XX century)

The dissertation is devoted to the complex research of the Ukrainian national statehood as a process of elaboration of the national state and legal tradition. The author’s scientific position on each of the components of the studied issues – the phenomena of the nation, statehood, state and legal tradition. The Ukrainian national state and legal tradition is defined as the Ukrainian nation-genesis, dependent on the constant of liberties – a natural-legal value, the loss of which consolidated the Ukrainian society of the early New Age. It is motivated that the constant of liberties underlies the characteristic features of the psychology of Ukrainians – libertarianism, democracy, individualism, the idea of equality, the inadmissibility of violence by the authorities, and so on. It is substantiated that these natural and legal mental values of Ukrainians form the basis of the process of developing a set of political and legal ideas of Ukrainian statehood and form the basis for understanding the national idea of the Ukrainian people. The opinion is substantiated that the natural and legal mental values of Ukrainians are inherent in the wide temporal palette of the evolution of Ukrainian statehood, at least within the studied period from the origins of the early New Age to the first attempts to implement the New Age in history (but not only). The author’s conclusions are based on the scientific achievements of world and domestic science and, mainly, a comprehensive analysis of the array of monuments of Ukrainian political and legal thought and practice of domestic statehood.