Abstract

Domestic and foreign scientific circles have long been discussing the affiliation of Ukrainian ethnic lands to civilized Europe. An important aspect in this context is the attribution of the national political and legal mentality to the family of European mentalities. For example, it should be noted that Orthodoxy, contrary to the opinion of many authors, is a European religion, the attitude of Ukrainians to private property is approximately identical to the European one. And based on the nature of the historical development of Ukrainian ethnic lands, the long stay of their part in European states (Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland, Hungary, etc.), the spread of Christianity (even in its Eastern Orthodox form), area the residence of the Ukrainian ethnos can rightly be attributed to the European space of civilization. It should also be emphasized that the mental diversity of Ukraine can play a positive role in the European integration processes of domestic society.At the same time, we must state significant differences between the content of domestic and Western automatisms. This, in particular, the difference in the attitude to work and its results, the institution of the state and law enforcement agencies, state property. And the concept of law in the Ukrainian legal mentality, in contrast to the European, is often replaced by notions of truth-justice, which on the one hand is a source of legal nihilism of Ukrainians, and on the other, gives the law a certain sacred meaning and «revives» it, preferring « spiritual law «before its» letter «Therefore, it is natural to conclude that domestic behavioral guidelines, including legal, are essentially European, but marked by certain specifics due to the» marginal position «of our people and other factors of stress genesis of domestic legal mentality.Thus, we can conclude that Ukraine is an integral part of the European civilization space, and national and Western legal mentalities in the process of interpenetration do not cause loud dissonance. It is also important that the interaction of Ukrainian and European mentalities results in a constructive transformation of the Ukrainian national character, overcoming the consequences of its stress genesis and creating a psychological basis for Ukrainians to build an effective rule of law.