Plagiarism in USSR

It came to my attention recently how many literary works coming out of Russia (especially during the time of USSR) was plagiarism! I remember as a little boy reading these stories and always thought that they were Russian because of the Russian author on the cover of the book (it never said 'translated by' followed by the Russian name, it was always 'Author' followed by the Russian name). Sad indeed, but I guess it is not very uncommon occurrence in this world. In Russia they even have a joke that goes something like this:

Copying from one source - plagiarism; from two - compilation; from three or more - dissertation!