THE RUS’ TRUTH AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE ESTABLISHMENT AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE UKRAINIAN LEGAL TRADITION
Authors: Boyko Ihor 
Published: July 2023

The article characterizes the place and role of the Rus’ Truth in the history of the state and law of Ukraine and determines its influence on the formation and development of the Ukrainian legal tradition. It is noted that legal traditions are directly related to the state traditions of the Ukrainian people. The state-legal traditions of the Ukrainian people are a centuries-old continuous process of development of the Ukrainian people, aimed at the formation of the state, passed down from generation to generation and preserved for a long time. The state-legal traditions of the Ukrainian people have an uninterrupted duration, since it includes not only the periods of the existence of the state, but also the periods of struggle for its restoration, national liberation struggles. The state-legal traditions in Ukraine began with the state of Antes, later the state of Kyivan Rus’, the Galicia-Volyn state, continued during the time of the Ukrainian Cossack state, and in the 20th century were represented by the period of the revival of an independent state on Ukrainian ethnic lands in 1917–1921 in the form of the Ukrainian People’s Republic under the Central Council, the Ukrainian State under Pavlo Skoropadskyi, the Ukrainian People’s Republic under the Directory and the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, the declaration of statehood and rights of Carpathian Ukraine (1939), of the Ukrainian state (1941); quasi-states and rights of the USSR. The state-legal traditions of the Ukrainian people embodied the desire to have their own state and law, republican forms of people’s power, electability of the state power, democratic principles of state construction and local self-government, freedom, equality, justice and orderliness in social relations, respect for a person, their life, health, dignity, attachment to private property, to the legal method of protection of violated rights, etc. The Ukrainian people, even during periods of prolonged stay under the rule of foreign states, without having their own state, preserved and developed their own national state-legal traditions and always showed an affinity for the traditions of Western European statehood and law. The state-legal traditions of the Ukrainian people are closely related to such a formulation as «the centuries-old history of Ukrainian statehood», an important component of which was the centuries-old struggle of the Ukrainian nation as an indigenous, titular nation for the right to create its own state. The foundation of national statehood is a long-term, complex process of birth, formation and development of Ukrainian statehood, which results in the creation of a Ukrainian state as a result of the Ukrainian nation development. Considerable attention is paid to the characteristics of the origins of the Ukrainian legal tradition, which go back to the legal culture of the Kyivan Rus’ state, where the foundations of law and the legal worldview were laid. As mentioned above, the formation and functioning of the Ukrainian legal tradition during the period of the Kyivan Rus’ state was positively influenced by the law-making of the Kyiv princes, the application of customary law, the reception of Byzantine and, through it, Roman law, trade and political ties of the Kyivan Rus’ state with Byzantium, Germany, France and other countries. Ancient Ukrainian law was codified for the first time in the Kyivan Rus’ state, the result of which was the adoption of the first legal code – the Rus’ Truth, a source of knowledge of the state-legal development on Ukrainian lands in the 9th-12th centuries, reflecting the level of socio-political, economic and cultural relations of the ancient Ukrainian society. It reveals the generalized legal worldview of Ukrainians regarding the legal foundations of their development, the peculiarities of the regulation of social relations. The Rus’ Truth was the fundamental normative legal act in the Kyivan Rus’ state. The Rus’ Truth was an important normative legal act that influenced the process of formation of Ukrainian law. The formation and development of the legal system of Ukraine began with Ukrainian customary law, princely legislation, and especially the Rus’ Truth in the times of the Kyivan Rus’ state.