Abstract. The article is dedicated to the events in IMEMO in the first half of the 2000s, associated with the activities of the Academician Nodari Simoniya, the new director of the Institute. In 2002, Simoniya added Gennadii Chufrin to his team as one of his deputy directors. In 2002, the editor-in-chief of the “World Economy and International Relations” journal was replaced. After the death of German Diligenskii, who had been heading the journal since 1988, the well-known political scientist Andrei Ryabov became the new editor-in-chief. He managed to preserve the best traditions laid down by his predecessor. The article also traces the main measures for the partial reorganization of the Institute’s structure, carried out by the Academician Simoniya in 2001–2006. The author reveals the substance of this reorganization aimed at concentrating the efforts of the IMEMO research team on the study of the most pressing and important problems of the contemporary world. One of the important decisions was the creation of the Center for Energy Problems headed by the Director of the Institute. The emergence of this research unit was the result of numerous requests received by the Institute from government agencies and economic structures, which wanted to have qualified expert assessments in this area. Therefore, it was decided to concentrate research on energy problems in one Center. Several previously existing research subdivisions also underwent reorganization: the Department of Developing Countries, which studied the Third world, was transformed into the Center for Development and Modernization Problems, where, among other things, Russia’s problems were addressed; the Department studying the internal political processes in Western countries was transformed into the Center for Socio-Economic and Socio-Political Studies of Western Countries and Russia. The Department of North American Studies, the Department of International Political Problems, the Department of Global Economic Problems and Foreign Economic Policy, and the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies were reorganized as well in order to actualize their studies. The measures for the partial reorganization of IMEMO were explained not only by considerations of research expediency, but also by the increasingly insistent demands of the government to reduce the number of employees of academic institutes in the system of the Russian Academy of Sciences. By the end of 2006, there was a slight decrease in the number of doctors of sciences at the Institute in comparison with 2001. This was largely due to objective reasons – retirement or death of senior researchers. But at the same time, there was a significant influx of young people into the postgraduate school. In general, the management of IMEMO succeeded in preserving human resources and academic potential of the Institute.