SLINCHENKO L. V. State views of V. Kuchabsky as representative of the conservative direction of Ukrainian political thought.

   The article analyzes the concept of statehood of a famous researcher of Ukrainian political thought in the first half of the twentieth century, Vasily Kuchabsky. Studying the period 1917-1920, he forms the main tasks of Ukrainian conservatism, aimed at the formation of the state, notes the special role of the elite and the national idea in this process. Continuing the concepts of contemporaries-representatives of conservatism (V. Lipinsky, S. Tomashevsky), V. Kuchabsky believes that the issue of creating a Ukrainian state can be solved not by ethnic unification within a foreign state, but the formation of the real factual composition of the nation in a certain place of its accumulation. Revealing the features of Ukrainian conservatism, the specifics of its functioning in the twentieth century, the works of V. Kuchabsky determine the reasons for the fall of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic, the main of which he calls the lack of aristocracy, the ill-conceived issues of state building in the Western Ukrainian lands, the desire to maintain autonomy, which does not spread to the “over Dnieper land”. The scientist considers the “forces of Ukrainian democracy” to be one of the main internal contradictions, which, in his opinion, were overwhelmed by patriotism, but lacked the qualities inherent only to the guides of the nation - political traditions, political experience and political culture.
   The author of the article insists on the need to consider the historical experience of building the Ukrainian state at the beginning of the twentieth century, to account the theoretical achievements of the ideologists of Ukrainian statehood, including the conservative trend in today's realities. It is important in the future model of socio-political development of Ukraine to consider and rely on traditions, especially the mentality of the people, the unifying role of religion in the creation of the state.
   Keywords: conservatism, state, nation, V. Kuchabsky, national liberation struggle.