The daughter of the rector of one of the St. Petersburg universities claims that Putin’s dissertation was written by her dad

Putin defended his scientific work in 1997, at the Mining Institute. The rector of St. Petersburg Mining University, Vladimir Litvinenko, personally wrote the dissertation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was told by his daughter Olga Litvinenko, writes Radio Liberty.

Olga Litvinenko from 2007 to 2011 the year was a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, participated in the work of Putin’s election headquarters. Seven years ago, after a conflict with her father, she fled the country. Her daughter Esther-Maria remained in Russia. Olga Litvinenko claims that her high-ranking father kidnapped her granddaughter and is now presenting her as his daughter. All attempts by Olga to return the child are unsuccessful. She now lives in Poland and received citizenship of this country.

Radio Liberty talked about this story in the publications “The Unloved Daughter of Putin’s Friend” and “My Father is Putin’s Shadow Cashier.” The information provided by Olga Litvinenko helped conduct investigations, the findings of which Vladimir Litvinenko is now trying to challenge in court. On January 24, Olga Litvinenko spoke at the Seimas of Lithuania. She is seeking to include her father and his friends on the Magnitsky list. Her speech in the Estonian parliament is scheduled for March 7.

“The country is ruled by Putin’s gangster group, which came from St. Petersburg and is now spreading in metastases throughout Russia, destroying it, leading to economic collapse. My father, being the head of three election headquarters, as well as Putin’s confidant, is an accomplice of the fact that human rights are violated in all possible ways in Russia. He is one of the shadow cashiers, like Roldugin, who holds Putin’s capital,” says Olga Litvinenko.

Olga Litvinenko. Photo: video frame

She is confident that her speeches played a role in the fact that the influence of Vladimir Litvinenko has declined. “He announced at a press conference that he would head Putin’s headquarters. Then this press conference was abruptly cancelled. After this, it is revealed that he will be the co-chair. Traditionally, the headquarters in Putin's hometown was at the Mining Institute. And now there is no headquarters at Mining, and my father is only the fourth co-chairman, that is, he is practically removed from headquarters activities.”

One of the secrets of Vladimir Putin, which is well known to Olga Litvinenko, is related to how he defended his Ph.D. thesis. This happened in 1997, at the same Mining Institute, now a university, headed by Vladimir Litvinenko. At that time, Putin had already moved to Moscow and held the position of deputy manager of the affairs of the President of the Russian Federation. Following Putin in 1998, Igor Sechin, a philologist-novelist by training, a teacher of Portuguese and French, defended his defense at Gorny. His dissertation was entitled “Economic assessment of investment projects for the transit of oil and petroleum products (using the example of the Kirishi-Batareynaya petroleum products pipeline).”

In 2006, researchers at the Brookings Institution in Washington discovered plagiarism in Vladimir Putin’s dissertation entitled “Strategic planning for the reproduction of the region’s mineral resource base in the context of the formation of market relations”: 16 of the 20 pages that begin a key part of Putin’s work were either copied or rewritten with minimal changes from the book “Strategic Planning and Policy” by University of Pittsburgh professors William King and David Cleland, published in 1979 and translated into Russian in 1982. Six charts and graphs from Putin's work almost completely coincide with the American ones.

“True, in some places interjections were changed or commas were rearranged. 16 pages of text and diagrams simply copy-paste, copy-paste, copy-paste. Of the 216 pages of the work, 140 are manuals on Leningrad mineral resources, 16 pages from the main theoretical chapters are from Pittsburgh scientists. In his dissertation, Putin himself apparently wrote only a couple of pages,” says Igor Danchenko, who discovered the plagiarism. After publications in the American press about Putin’s dissertation, he began to receive telephone threats: “You won’t work in government agencies in Russia after this!”

In an interview with Vlast magazine in 2006, Vladimir Litvinenko said: “I have been following the work from the very beginning. The first version of the dissertation of Vladimir Putin, a “non-academic” person, caused criticism and was rejected, and we recommended that it be revised. A few months later he brought a completely revised version, taking into account the comments, and was allowed to defend. Therefore, I have no doubt that he worked independently.” The President of Russia himself and his representatives did not comment on the accusations of plagiarism.

How did Vladimir Putin actually become a candidate of economic sciences? Olga Litvinenko tells Radio Liberty about how this dissertation was written and dozens of others:

- Let's start with the background. In 1991, my father met Putin through Gennady Belik, chairman of the Association of Veterans of Foreign Intelligence. Belik oversaw the illegal export of rare earth metals to Western countries. My father was brought into this business as a mineral resource specialist. In 1994, Putin and Belik made him rector. A certain amount of pressure was exerted, in some cases even bribery of representatives of the teaching staff who were members of the academic council and had the right to vote, and thus elections were organized. He became rector in 1994. After he became rector, he used his official powers and organized an illegal business - the production of dissertations. Then there was a boom, everyone wanted to become candidates or doctors of science. Various kinds of dissertations were made for high-ranking officials based on plagiarism. And Rem Vyakhirev defended himself there, I was in the pre-defense, and Vyakhirev’s son, and Viktor Zubkov defended himself, and Putin used the services of his protege. In fact, in the oldest technical university in the country, a criminal group of respected people, professors, teachers, and scientists was organized. I know their names, but I won’t name them yet: maybe they will admit it themselves. They organized such a business, it was on stream: they churned out fictitious dissertations with a obviously clear result at the defense. “Turnkey” included pre-defense, defense, then my father pushed it all through the Higher Attestation Commission so that there would be no questions for the lucky holder of a high scientific degree, candidate or doctor of science. I worked there as an assistant to the rector and saw it all. The rates ranged from approximately 30 thousand euros for a candidate's dissertation, and if we are talking about doctoral dissertations, then it varied depending on the degree of coolness of the businessman, from 50 to 100 thousand euros. A lot of people from Gazprom defended themselves. How did you receive the money? It was just a cache, put under the table. How were people who wrote dissertations remunerated? My father did not write to everyone, as he did to Putin, but a group of teaching staff wrote. Accordingly, contracts from the extra-budgetary fund of the institute for supposedly scientific activities were closed to them, and their salaries were officially paid.

And he personally wrote this dissertation to Putin. 1997 year, summer, they brought a copier to our dacha, my father took a vacation. Putin never appeared at our country house, never consulted with my father about a dissertation, that is, it was not like a graduate student came to the professor: I have such questions, let's discuss, rewrite, and so on. No, there was absolutely no such thing here. That is, all this was written exclusively by my father. And this is how it was done: various books were taken, some paragraph was liked, so we put this page on the copier, then he cut out what he liked, put it on sheets of А4 format, added his comment and then went on some other paragraph . All this I saw, it was before my eyes.

- Americans found one of the sources - book 1979 of the year. Perhaps your father did not suspect that plagiarism could be so easily calculated.

“At that time, he thought that it would simply be closed somewhere in the archive. I worked at Putin’s first headquarters, and a Washington Post journalist came to us. He said: I want to get acquainted with the abstract of the dissertation of the future president. The rector said: no, this is a strategic, top-secret document, we cannot show it to the Western media. The journalist says: “This is wrong, I will sit here until you let me read the dissertation, I have the right to do so.” After this incident, security appeared in Gorny to weed out dissidents.

- How much did Putin pay for his thesis??

“I don’t know, but maybe his father even wrote to him for free.” Firstly, this is his protege as rector; they have a joint business, and more than one. Therefore, it seems to me that there was no talk about a certain amount of money. Perhaps this was my father’s gratitude for his help in obtaining the position of rector. Plus, throughout their lives they were connected by various business interests. In addition to rare earth metals, there is the oil industry, gold, and diamond business. Transparency did a good investigation, but this is only the tip of the iceberg, what my father actually did and is doing.

- On the defense of Putin, you were not?

- No, but I saw photos from the pre-defense. He really was there, they wrote to him, that he must say. Prepared, pre-selected members of the dissertation council voted in favor. It was part of the contract, as these dissertations were fabricated. There was always a positive result, there should have been no doubt that the dissertation could not pass the defense. It's like an exam, defense and pre-defense, you take the exam or not. There was a positive result here.

- and never one at the institute tried to rebel, did not flinch at anybody's conscience?

- There was one professor, I do not want to call his name now. Then the hooligans attacked him under very strange circumstances. Another professor opposed the regime: that there is no freedom in Gorny for teachers and students, but it became some kind of regime object. He was also hounded by the administrative line, they were not even allowed to conduct scientific research. But basically everyone was afraid. After all, everyone knows what atrocities my father can do. Personally, in my eyes, he beat a guard who did not greet him on time. This is a terrible person, really afraid of him.

- FROMNow the court in St. Petersburg invalidated your passport. What does all of this mean?

“It’s just that my father is afraid that I will return to Russia.” He came up with such a thing, completely absurd in its essence. In Putin's Russia, any absurdity can be done. We have now appealed this decision, so I hope that the passport will not be cancelled. Although this is the same Vasileostrovsky court, where all the absurd decisions were made against me, where they confirmed the fact of my alleged abduction, with whose consent my property was seized, with whose consent my daughter was kidnapped, with whose consent they wanted to take my son away. Now in the Vasileostrovsky court my father is suing Transparency, Business Petersburg and journalist Ira Pankratova, who conducted an amazing study based on real facts. I myself suggested to “Transparency” and everyone else that I was ready to be a real witness, because I was my father’s assistant, I saw a lot, I know a lot and I am ready to confirm that everything that “Transparency” wrote is the complete truth.

- Two weeks left before the presidential election in Russia. What do you think, as a former deputy, a man who knows Vladimir Putin and his friends and who worked at his headquarters about what awaits Russia?

- Russia is waiting for only the worst, economic decline, a complete catastrophe in the international arena. Putin’s autocracy will only increase. Europe is uniting, everyone is trying to find ways to cooperate, and he is acting by the old Soviet methods - strengthening society through militarization, the Cold War, and nuclear weapons. This is not an election - it is a pseudo-election, and the result is absolutely obvious. And all the other election participants are fake figures that make them seemingly legal, although in fact we all understand that there is only one candidate.

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