This article explores the sources of legitimacy of private property in the means of production in Ukraine. The conceptualization of legitimacy of private property was made by analyzing theoretical approaches to the study of the foundations of private property relations in Western countries. The application of these approaches tests economic utilitarian, psychological, and sociocultural explanations of legitimacy of large and small private enterprises and private land in the process of activation of post-communist transition of Ukrainian society. The basic hypothesis was that the process of legitimation of private property in the means of production proceeds by uniting utilitarian and psychological adaptation with sociocultural agreement of ideological attitudes. This hypothesis was verified with the help of created legitimacy indices by comparison of linear regressions and data of the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Ukraine for 2013 and 2017. The results indicate that the hypothesis has been held true only concerning legitimacy of small private enterprises. They have acquired a moderate extent of legitimacy owing to the fact that besides the factors of adaptation, social recognition has increased at the expense of people who support the multiparty system and the liberal and mixed methods of regulation of the economy. In contrast, the existence of large private enterprises and private land has not acquired the corresponding sociocultural foundation.
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