The article is a response to the publication by M.E. Karyagin and A.Yu. Sungurov (“Polis. Political Studies”. 2016. No. 2). The author attempts to clarify some aspects of the institutional history of the Russian political science and notes that in the last two decades there has been a significant increment of knowledge about the formation of this field of research, starting from the last third of the nineteenth century to the present day. The article highlights the little-known pages of domestic specialists’ interaction with the International Political Science Association virtually since its inception. In the middle of the XX century the world political science community developed the set of criteria (that still retain their value) for evaluation of scientific content of political studies in different countries. These studies are marked by the diversity of directions, branches and national configurations, a variety of methodological and methodical approaches to research political phenomena. The author suggests that analysis of the relations of academic and expert communities and the factors of their differentiation and internal demarcation should be conducted not only in terms of “science-practice” or specialization at the academic market on researchers who are involved in science, on the one hand, and teachers employed mainly in the transmission of scientific knowledge, on the other hand, but also on the basis of differences in political and scientific-political views. The article questions the understanding of the object and subject of political science that leads to the logical assumption that a decline of authorities’ interest in scientific knowledge about politics makes political science unnecessary or, at best, substituted by practical expert knowledge. In contrast to this position, the hypothesis is proposed about civil society as a possible recipient of scientific and expert knowledge about politics.