In recent years new traditions were being created in political cultures, and at the same time certain earlier traditions were being re-created. Alongside with that, an opposite process is taking place – that of detraditionalization. The author demonstrates that renunciation of traditions as of the basic form of continuity augments the risks of undermining the unity of society, which manifest themselves, first, in the risks of break-up, of direct disintegration and, second, in the risks of loss of symbolic unity fraught with crisis of identity. To replace dependence on tradition there come, in modern open society, basically new risks of peculiar retribution for the release from traditions. The author analyzes these new risks.