Orthodoxy as the political culture in the contemporary Ukraine

The aim of the article is to analyse the place and importance of the Orthodox Church in the political culture of Ukraine after 1991. The term “political culture” is understood in accordance with the approach suggested by Kenneth Jowitt. It allows for a fairly good understanding of the reasons for which institutions and symbols associated with the Orthodox religion are so heavily involved in the political life of Ukraine. The article briefly characterizes the most important factors that make up the specificity of Ukrainian post-Soviet political culture. These are: the system of nomenclature (at the level of the elites), neopatrimonialism (at the level of the regime) and the consequences of Sovietization (at the level of the community). The way that Orthodoxy is present in behaviour and social practice which make up political culture at each of these levels is analysed in the subsequent part of the article. It seems that its effect on the political culture of Ukraine is ambivalent. This means that in some areas Orthodoxy is conducive to maintaining fixed patterns and mechanisms characteristic of post-Soviet reality, while in others it is a catalyst for change, which means implementing practices and social elements of the Western European model of political culture