The author analyzes the evolution of a political phenomenon, which appeared during the electoral cycle of 2007-2008 in Russia and which it has become common to define by a misterious word “tandem”. The analysis is not reduced to interpretation of relations between President Medvedev and Prime-Minister Putin only, but concerns the most fundamental problems and antagonisms of social, political, and cultural development of Russia in XX and early XXI century. The author uncovers the internal contradictions of the “tandem” construction deriving from conflictness of two strategies of the country’s development, personified by the one and the other leaders in this “tandem”.