IntroductionTransit success in post-socialist countries of Central Europe and Baltic countries are often explained by the long-term historical belonging to European culture. Their transit was reflected in mass consciousness as the return to habitual, established social order. Instead, East-European countries, and Ukraine in its post-soviet borders in particular, belonged only partially to this civilization area and had the experience of long-term stay in the Russian empire and Soviet Union. From the beginning of socio-economic transformation the institutional changes in Ukrainian economy were in correlation with its structure and branch prospect of its modernization, the direction of society development towards certain geo-economic formation and readiness of population to adapt to transformation consequences. In this context the attraction of path-dependence theory is expedient for understanding the problems of legitimation of new economic institutes (David, 1985; David, 2011). As a whole, this theory shows the dependence of introduction of new institutes on the influence of old ones, which restrain and block modernization initiatives. Modernization is often impossible because of socio-cultural traditions which hold development in the corresponding sociocultural framework. Therewith, that is not always a direct indispensable dependence on equivalent institutes (influence of former economic institutes and new economic institutes) but exclusively occasional influence of the previous institutional system. This conception explains the mechanisms which reproduce the major features of the previous social system in the studies of transition economy (Nee, Cao, 1999).The implementation of modernization reforms in such over-regulated economies as Ukrainian one needs liberalization of economic processes and destruction of system corruption which has resulted in formation of Ukrainian oligarchic-bureaucratic capitalism. Such reforms need some social foundation, citizens which would support actively and subsequently these transformations. Thus, there arises a question of social legitimation of the ownership system in economy and the factors which either block or favor this legitimation.We tried to demonstrate in this paper how legitimacy of a certain economic system in the transit society is often connected with rather non-economic phenomena of consciousness. Economic preferences of people in such post-soviet society as the Ukrainian one closely interrelated with foreign-political identities, when legitimacy of a certain economic system is to be coordinated with corresponding historical and cultural examples of desirable path of the country development. In our case the question is that at the initial stage of transformation the attraction of the state or private capital to the economy control depends to a higher extent on socio-cultural restrictions of path-dependence, than on the objective state of an individual in economy. But in the course of time the economic consciousness of the individual is rationalized, and as a result the attitude to economic transformations begins to agree with his own social interests.1. Theoretical BackgroundAn economic system is based on correlation of the attraction of government and private capital in economy regulation (Conklin, 1991). A socialist system is based on planned (command) economy, when means of production are state-owned property and government makes all decisions as to production and consumption of commodities and services. Capitalism foresees the use of market regulators and predominance of private capital, when the state influence in the economic sphere is reduced to minimum. The mixed system is characterized by availability of the market economy with considerable influence of the state on socio-economic development with the use of administrative levers with a considerable part of the state sector of economy.A phenomenon of social legitimation may be treated as the process of appearance, formation and development of people's faith in legitimacy or lawfulness of a certain social system determined by various factors (Weber, 1964; Parsons, 1960). …