This article analyzes the issues of civil society in post-communist Ukraine. These issues were actualized during the Orange Revolution at the end of 2004. The “outdated” point (as it might look now) on the lack of “the civil society argument” still provides a major explanation for the difficulties of democratic and market reforms in post-Soviet countries. The article is focused upon two aspects of the formation of post-Soviet, particularly Ukrainian, civil society: the peculiarities of its discourse and the issues an of emerging civic ethos. A one-dimensional concept on post-Soviet civil society, reducing it to the NGOs network, is reconceptualized. It is concluded that optimistic perspectives for the Ukrainian civil society can be related to the recent trends in the transformation of personal identity toward the more self-reliable pattern of social activity.
