Putin accused of plagiarizing part of master’s thesis

WASHINGTON – In 1997 Vladimir Putin had just been summoned to Moscow to serve in Boris Yeltsin’s Kremlin. He looked to boost his credentials by earning a graduate degree.

To secure that degree, Putin wrote “The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations.”

Now, Clifford Gaddy, a specialist on the Russian economy at Washington’s Brookings Institute, says at least 16 pages of text and some charts, tables and other graphics came from “Strategic Planning and Policy,” a textbook on business management written two decades earlier by two American professors: William R. King and David I. Cleland. Putin listed the book, translated into Russian in 1982, as a reference.

“I calculate that there are more than 16 pages worth of text taken verbatim from King and Cleland,” Gaddy said at a conference recorded by Radio Free Europe. “There are six – at least six – diagrams and tables lifted directly or slightly modified from King and Cleland with no attribution whatever.”

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “We do not consider it necessary to comment on such absurd accusations.”

The year after he arrived in Moscow, Putin submitted his thesis to the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. Three years later, after a stint as prime minister, he succeeded Yeltsin as president.

Susan Spilka, spokeswoman for John Wiley & Sons, Inc., the owner of the book’s copyright, said the publisher would not sue.