This is a sequel to a recent article, Addressing the Cancer of Discrimination. If you ever took a college class from me, you would know that I have a number of idiosyncrasies, which probably would number a couple of dozen. However, plagiarism was at the top of the list. Cheating by copying someone else's writings isn’t learning. If I allow a student to plagiarize, I teach the student that it is okay to be dishonest. If I allow that person to learn that, he or she will eventually be caught. I wish that Trump had been one of my students. More about that later.

This essay deals with Alexander Melentyevich Volkov, a Russian writer in the 20^th century. He wrote a several-part series entitled Magic Land, and the first book was The Wizard of the Emerald City in 1939. Volkov rewrote the American author, L. Frank Baum, classic The Wizard of Oz in 1900.

L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz

Alexander Volkov’s The Wizard of the Emerald City

Interestingly, Volkov wrote about trying to parallel Dorothy’s journey. Volkov was teaching in Russia during the 1930s and happened to come across Baum’s novel. Reflecting upon being fascinated by Baum’s novel, he said it was a “fairytale, with its charming plot, appealed to me. But I had to substantially rework it.”

So, this Russian professor took Baum’s work and “substantially rework(ed) it.” As it turned out, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Anne Nesbet, compared the two novels. She discovered that only 15 pages weren’t in Baum’s writing, and the rest of the book was nearly a verbatim copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

There are all sorts of theories as to why the Soviets copied Baum’s novel. Additionally, there are more speculations regarding the psychological motivations behind the reasons for the Soviets to push for these stories.

Maria Nikolajeva, a Russian writer and critic, was quoted in a recent JSTOR posting, “Soviet fairy tales clearly reflect the ruling ideology and propagate the values inherent in it. As such, they faithfully served the purposes of the society in which they were created.”

I was interested in reading JSTOR, but I’m more concerned about what Volkov's plagiarism means to us in 2025. At the beginning of this essay, I mentioned in passing Trump. Trump is Putin’s lapdog. I wish that I had the opportunity to teach Trump in college. Plagiarism, unaddressed, opens a can of worms. Students will learn to cheat as a way of life. Trump plagiarized so much that he cut and pasted nearly everything he believed. When that doesn’t work, Trump, our very stable genius, will edit what he plagiarized.

When facing COVID, he maintained that it would disappear by spring. Well, it didn’t. Several springs later, 111 million reported cases of COVID-19 in the States, which resulted in 1.2 million deaths. Our Orange President didn’t wear a mask. He left Walter Reed Medical Center wearing one after three days of being hospitalized due to COVID-19.

BSing about the truth hurts all of us. Trump is imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico. He then delayed them for a month, warning Europe they would face tariffs soon. Trump wants the budget approved with allegedly significant savings by chainsawing tens of thousands of jobs. Those cuts will supposedly result in millions of dollars for what purpose? Trump wants to continue the income tax cuts for the millionaires passed in 2017.

Watch this scene from The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy and the Scarecrow are discussing brains.

This is the Russian trailer of The Wizard of the Emerald City.

This is a trailer for The Wizard of Oz.