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For a few years now, science and innovation have become, for Russian authorities, a major preoccupation that concerns the country's economic future. But apart from the fact that Russia is now looking for the means to get out of the energy rut it finds itself in by betting on the “knowledge economy,” science and innovation are a burning question on the political front. After a decade of directing the rebirth of the country as a great power, Russia is now confronted with a series of internal political issues that question the future of the power project that leans on a material and identity heritage taken from the USSR. The scientific domain does not escape from this rule; it is from that angle that this article proposes to look into the political and economic staging that anchors itself in the territory on the basis of various power networks and representations of the rebirth that sometimes come into conflict.