W. Shedd of The Accidental Russophile and Alex(ei) of The Russian Dilettante's Weblog discuss Vladimir Putin's plagiarized dissertation: “What was Putin doing in 1997? If I am not mistaken, he was vice mayor of St. Petersburg. For some reason, he decided on getting a PhD […]. What would the typical bureaucrat do? My guess is he'd pay someone to write a thesis for him. The hired academic had too many theses to write and saved time and effort by plagiarizing. Whether Putin took this way or not, who knows?”