After reading the article (quite a while back), I got the feeling this
was a proposal. Maybe a proposal for a thesis project, e.g. submitted
at the two year point in a PhD program, or maybe a masters program.

per conversation with Kuzmin this WAS his thesis, and he was granted a
degree for it. I wonder what kind of a university could grant a degree
based on that type of research. In that conversation, Kuzmin was using
the fact that the degree has been granted to justify that the research
was of acceptable quality.