Abstract: The subject of this research is the alienation of tradition as a way of relating to the past. The goal of this article consists in conceptualization of an “alienated tradition” as a mode of relationship between the social present and the social past, generated by the historical dynamics of development of the tradition, which is simultaneously a factor of social development and a source of personal suffering. The research methodology leans on the principle of social epistemology, which implies following the mutual conditionality of evolution of representations on connection between the present and the past, reflected in the concept of tradition sociocultural mechanisms of the tradition. The article analyzes the language of interpretation of tradition as a combination of sociocultural mechanisms connecting the social present and the past. The novelty of this work consists in interdisciplinary synthesis of the concepts and research positions: the classical concept of alienation, research on intergenerational communication and cultural memory, socio-criticism studies, and theory of suffering. The alienation of tradition suggests objectification of these connections, in terms of which the social past perceived by a person as the new and communicative grounds for the alienation of tradition, emerged as result of increasing vicariousness of intergenerational communication. The alienation of tradition has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it becomes the foundation for self-determination of a person with regards to cultural continuum, force of development, due to the fact that a person is no longer positioned as a result of determinacy by the past, but an active subject who transforms the world relying on own mind, rather than the legacy of the past. On the other hand, the alienation of tradition becomes a cause of suffering; the more vicarious becomes the person’s relationship with the past, the more antagonistic and alienated become the grounds for his existence in culture that are determined by the past.