Ukrainian Soviet agents of change: the socio-historical context of capital transformation

Abstract

In the context of socio-political transformations fundamentally significant collective actors, whose activities were, incl. quite significant social and legal burden, there were corresponding so-called agents of changes. The article sets the goal of sociologically reconstructing the transformation of the symbolic capital of Ukrainian dissidents into social capital within the framework of the social and legal context in the USSR and in independent Ukraine. A significant feature of the Ukrainian dimension of the dissident movement, which is considered in the corresponding socio-legal field in the categories of agents of changes, is, first of all, that it began with an examination of the general problems of the legitimacy of Soviet power, first of all in the focus of the search for legitimate prerequisites and necessary constitutional and procedural mechanisms for Ukraine's secession from the USSR and its independence. Another key socio-legal dimension of the activities of Ukrainian dissidents was human rights issues. Thus, in the process of its formation and development, the dissident movement itself became the reason for the delegitimation of the Soviet regime, primarily in terms of its violation of the declared norms of the Constitution and fundamental social rights and political freedoms. In turn, moral authority and the social and legal capital based on it significantly influenced the fact that in the process of Ukraine's independence, former dissidents became the socio-political nucleus that initiated and developed fundamentally significant political and legal documents, such as the Declaration on State Sovereignty of Ukraine and the act of proclaiming the independence of Ukraine, as well as the Constitution and laws of Ukraine based on them.