Historical origins of the institution of guardianship of children deprived of parental care before the declaration of Ukraine’s independence

Abstract

This article reveals the essence of the institution of guardianship as one of the main forms of placement of orphans and children deprived of parental care through the prism of the study of the stages of its formation and development, in order to determine their main regularities, which is important in the conditions of our state’s stay in a complex socio-economic situation, due primarily to the armed aggression of the Russian FederationThe conducted research made it possible to highlight the following stages of the formation and development of the institution of guardianship of children deprived of parental care, namely: the period of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages, the period when Ukrainian lands were under the rule of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the period associated with the declaration of independence of the Ukrainian state.The position is argued, according to which the institution of adoption and guardianship in Ukrainian lands originated in the period of paganism, and with the emergence of Kyivan Rus, the provisions relating to guardianship and care are already beginning to be mentioned. It is emphasized that during the Polish-Lithuanian rule, along with many other institutions, the institution of guardianship and care also developed (norms on the protection of the rights of orphans were contained in the Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania);It is concluded that the period of stay of the Ukrainian lands under the power of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union was characterized by the legislative design of the system of guardianship and care institutions and their subsequent profiling. Social and economic problems, as a result of the First and Second World Wars, had a significant impact on the institution of guardianship during this period.To achieve the goal, the authors used methods characteristic of legal science. The research was conducted primarily using historical-legal, sociological, systemic-structural methods and the dialectical method of learning scientific reality.