THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL REGULATION OF LANGUAGE RELATIONS IN UKRAINE: HISTORY AND PRESENT

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the constitutional and legal regulation of relations in the language sphere and the establishment of its historical origins and modern trends. It is justified by the idea of the need for the effective functioning of the institute of the state language, which acts as the basis of the constitutional system of Ukraine. The article clarifies the constitutional principles of language relations in Ukraine, examines the constitutional and legal institute of languages, defines the legal remedies that regulate relations in the lan-guage sphere and establishes modern trends of effective constitutional and legal regulation of language relations. In this work the main stages of the transformation of approaches to the legal regulation of language relations in Ukraine are analyzed, starting from the Soviet times and up to the present. On the basis of this analysis, a correlation is established between the proper legal regulation of language relations and the formation of national identity as a factor of modern Ukrainian society. On the basis of a systematic study of the constitutional and legal regulation of language relations in Ukraine, it’s determined that language rela-tions are a direct object of the regulation. The conclusion is made about the specificity of the nature of such relations, therefore, when implementing regulation, there is a need to use not all legal remedies at the same time, but only those that effectively regulate the private and public spheres of communication. It is also concluded that the stability of the constitutional system of Ukraine and security from potential threats to statehood due to the language issue depends on the level of compliance of constitutional and legal regulation with rapid and qualitative changes in social relations. At the same time, the foundation of such regulation is the need to establish an effective relationship between the state language and the lan-guages of national minorities. The issue of the conformity of the level of constitutional and legal regulation of language relations in Ukraine with the level of development of Ukrainian society that has developed today continues to be debatable.It is proposed to amend the pro-visions of Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine, where in the third part, the word "Rus-sian" as the language of the national minority should be removed.