Purpose: To consider the main tendencies and features of political life of the Cossack emigration in the XX century. Methodology: Methodological basis of research are the standard principles of a historicism and the objectivity, assuming the concrete historical approach to the analysis of events in their dialectic development. Results: It is revealed that the Cossack emigration lost the political positions. Separation from sociocultural and geographical space of formation and development of traditional culture; foreign culture environment; refusal of the Cossack ideas of a collectivism and military brotherhood; destruction of the main institute of preservation and transfer of historical and cultural experience – a family; the constant feeling of «temporariness», despair and loss of belief in the future – all this generated the phenomenon called in cross-cultural psychology «cultural shock». Also crisis of ethnic and sociocultural consciousness and self-identification increased. Practical implications: Results of research can be interesting to the experts who are taking up the problems stories of the Cossacks in emigration.