Vladimir Rostislavovich Medinsky (Russian: Владимир Ростиславович Мединский, Ukrainian: Мединський Володимир Ростиславович) (born July 10, 1970) is a Russian political figure, publicist, and since May 2012 serves as the Minister of Culture. He is a member of the General Council of the United Russia party. His dissertation thesis and publications on history of Russia were criticized as plagiarism and pseudoscience.The third thesis of 2011 has been widely debated in the Russian media and a large number of fragments have been shown to bear a significant resemblance to existing academic works, which caused numerous accusations of plagiarism. Wikipedia