Political culture is the historically developed values that have evolved over time (a set of ideas, perceptions, and orientations) that define a state's political life. In the modifications of the existence of the Ukrainian state, the motif of the intellectual tradition of republicanism speaks candidly.
The foundations of republicanism rest on the ideal of a political community whose members actively participate in public life and do not "outsource" key decisions to monarchs, tyrants, or foreign rule. Cicero formulated this as "Res publica est res populi" - "The" republic is the work of the people".
was one manifestation of republicanism in the political culture of Kyivan Rus, a medieval state centred in Kyiv. Convening a viche required the consent of the people, emphasising the people's active role as a feature of the political culture of Rus. Since representatives of all classes participated in the viche, it can be considered as an example of a pluralistic society.
Kyivan Rus' feudal system was based on "volost'' as a form of land ownership. In Kyivan Rus, boyars (the upper ruling class) inherited property and retained it even as power passed from one Knyaz (ruler, prince) to another. This established the inalienable nature of property as a feature of political life. For example, feudal Western Europe was characterised by the alienability of property, where feudal landownership was dependent on service to the lord.
Western Europe's nation-states emerged from limited (usually constitutional) monarchies. Eastern Europe's territories differed in their political and economic development, so they mostly retained their authenticity, united only by a common dynasty. In the early 16th century, the Jagiellonian dynasty ruled over Poland, Lithuania, Prussia, Ukraine, and other lands. However, national political cultures remained distinct.
the Hetmanate, a Ukrainian Cossack early modern state, which emerged as a result of Cossack disobedience in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1648 under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytsky due to rights infringement, which was described by the historian Vladyslava Moskalets as "Paradise for the gentry, Heaven for the Jews, and Hell for the peasants."
The political culture of the Cossack state-building process was democratic republicanism, which served as the foundation for the formation of a new social organisation. This was a Cossack community, where everyone had a free and equal right to use the land, the same rights to participate in self-government and gatherings, and they built their own economy based on free-hired labor to develop new land.
The democratic republicanism of the Sich's
(a centre of the autonomous polity of Cossacks dating back to the 16th-18th centuries) political culture was manifested in several cornerstone principles: the Cossacks were the source of power; the Cossacks' continued equality at the Sich Rada (Council); the deterrence against the usurpation of power by the Cossack elders, providing for annual reports and re-election procedures.
For example, in order to maintain autonomy and individualism, Hetman Ivan Mazepa's rebellion against Moscow rule and the Haidamak uprising of 1768, the Koliyivshchyna, were a struggle for the survival of the aforementioned political attitudes.
According to Yevhen Malaniuk, a Ukrainian conservative intellectual from the 20th century, Mazepa's Ukraine inherited the characteristics of "ancient Kyivan Humanism", which established a political culture of individual liberty. These liberties, however, were primarily extended to the Cossacks (the warrior class), leaving peasants and, to some extent, the bourgeoisie outside the scope of a political contract. Cossack political thinking in the early 18th century reflected Western European ideas of politics as a "social contract".
The Russian tsarist regime's constant suppression of democratic political culture sparked increased resistance in Ukrainian society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as the concept of tyranny was foreign to Ukrainians
. Despite persecution by the Russian Empire, intellectuals supported the republican political culture.
Mykhailo Drahomanov, a key Ukrainian 19th-century intellectual who was forced into exile by the Russian empire, advocated for a "minimal state" that did not centralise power and did not have a monopoly on violence.
Citizens, as sources of sovereignty, should express common interests rather than individual will.
The Ruthenian-Ukrainian Radical Party, founded by Ivan Franko, a disciple of Drahomanov and a leading figure of the Western Ukrainian intellectual movement active in the Habsburg Empire, also advocated for Ukrainian political independence.
He believed that republicanism could only be established through the full exercise of constitutional rights by citizens who relied on knowledge rather than blind faith in leaders' authority and used democratic procedures.
Even before Ukraine declared independence, this party became the Communist Party's main opposition.
The active expression of citizens' will, which controls the accountability of the branches of power and enjoys fundamental rights, is an integral part of modern Ukraine's political culture.
The Orange Revolution (a peaceful protest against pro-Russian candidate Yanukovych's election fraud in 2004/2005) and the Revolution of Dignity (a revolution against an unjust socio-political system that resulted in violence in 2013/2014) are just two examples (among the many) of socio-political activism that is an essential part of Ukraine's contemporary political culture. It is worth noting that these processes are bottom-up impulses rather than peremptory orders from above.
Although Kyivan Rus, the Cossacks, and various forms of Ukrainian statehood were deliberately destroyed by various forms of authoritarian violence emanating from the East, the political culture has regenerated and retained the characteristics of solidarity, freedom, justice, and cohesion, i.e., Res publica. Thus, the tradition of Ukrainian republicanism has deep historical roots.
