THE ORIGINS AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UKRAINIAN STATE (III CENTURY BC – IX CENTURY AD): HISTORICAL AND LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION

Abstract

The actual problem of Ukrainian statehood commencement in the context of Ukrainian political and legal tradition of statehood is raised. The purpose of the article is to cover an in-depth development of the concept of formation's content of in the first historical forms of Ukrainian statehood by the autochthons of the Middle Dnieper region (ancestors of the Ukrainian people) in connection with various ethnic communities. Within the framework of socio-cultural and systemic approaches, it was proved by the method of logical analysis that the early historical forms of Ukrainian statehood arose without any significant borrowing from the state-building experience of other nations. The method of reconstruction highlighted the process of institutionalization of public power and confirmed the centuries-old continuity of the political and legal tradition in this area. Using the method of periodization, three periods of the process of the emergence and formation of early forms of Ukrainian statehood are distinguished: the Scythian era (VI-IV centuries BC); late antique times (II-IV centuries AD); the early Middle Ages, when Kyiv was founded and the state called Rus (Ukraine-Rus) was formed (VI-IX centuries AD). The proposition that the origins of the Russian state should be analyzed within the chronological limits of the second half of the 30s of the 9th century is substantiated. In connection with the conclusion of the first known treaty with Byzantium in Amastrid in 839, where it was first mentioned under its own name. It was found out that historically, the first forms of Ukrainian statehood were the Ante confederation and Rus. Subjects of the confederation retained territorial sovereignty with their own self-government, jurisdiction of local authorities within their territory and customary law. It is proved that within the framework of the confederation, the functions of princely governance were institutionalized, which took place in the streamlining and structuring of interaction with princes, tribal military leaders, tribal nobility, and self-governing territorial communities. The main result of the study is the conclusion that the first historical forms of Ukrainian statehood were the Ante confederation and Rus. They had all basic attributes of statehood in the legal plane: the people and the language of the people, as the most important marker of their ethnic self-identification; the motherland of the country with geographical, geospatial, and ethnographic characteristics; the continuity of the state values in the law that form a legal view of life through the prism of the mental representations of the people about truth, goodness, and justice. It was also emphasized that of all the characteristic features of the modern concept of the Ukrainian state, the legal power was historically the first to be formed, due to its mechanism, it was formed horizontally on the principle of equality and independence of all subjects of the confederation, united on a contractual basis; in the mechanism of the operation of law, the instrument of legal influence made norms of customary law, and the instrument of legal regulation was barbaric law. The links of legal influence and legal regulation were organically intertwined on the basis of legal tradition.