This chapter analyzes the efforts of the Russian state to manage the economic and scientific competitiveness prompted by global neoliberalization. The Russian state has designed an institutional network of university statuses, each with its own role in adhering to the state goals of economic and technological development. By more closely integrating universities into activities serving the state’s development goals, governmental projects in the field of research and higher education exert stronger institutional power over university activities and, more broadly, institutional coherence across the vast territory of the Russian state. However, such an institutional network signals not only the (authoritarian) power of the state but also its attempts to manage the state’s performance in global neoliberalization. While some universities were assigned the role of promoting national and regional economic development, others were stimulated to compete internationally. Finally, I argue that the rationality of global competitiveness, understood in state-centered and nationalistic terms, contributes to the neo-imperial behaviors of states.