The article presents results of an ongoing study of centers of intellectual innovations in post-Soviet Russia. Using the European University at St. Petersburg as the main object of their analysis, the authors demonstrate how new models of academic careers, which became available in the 1980s and 1990s, were eventually institutionalized as new models of knowledge production and educational practices. Supported by American foundations, this private university had to invent a new institutional structure and to position itself within the field of higher education, still mostly dominated by the state.Keywords Sociology of education Á Sociology of knowledge Á Academic careers On February 8th, 2008, at the request of the state fire inspection agency, the Dzeržinsky District Court shut down the European University at St. Petersburg (EUSP hereafter), a small, private, postgraduate institution specializing in the humanities. The closing followed on the heels of a grant issued by European Union to a group of EUSP researchers for the purpose of monitoring the upcoming Duma elections. That both then-president Vladimir Putin and his assistant Sergej Trans. From the Russian