Customer Reviews

History: Fiction or Science? Chronology Vol.IV

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Despite the efforts of critics, skeptics and "debunkers" this book is gaining popular acceptance very fast. Everyone i know who is interested in history is stunned by the ideas the Fomenko Group present. The idea that Ghengis Khan was the Turkic/Eastern name of a Russian prince is breathtaking in it's implications. Or, the case for "Mongolia" to have been a corruption of the Greek "Megalion"(or Great) representing a "Horde"(or "orde/order", the Russian name of it's Medieval professional horse-soldiers) as the historicists distortion of the Mongol Hordes as being of Far Eastern origin instead of being Russian Cossacks(Khazaks).

This book is so filled with shocking and exciting ideas about how history has been obfuscated, hidden, and changed to suit the local needs of political factions that it has completely altered my perspective on current worl events and the "how" and "why" of Central European and Middle Eastern politics! Many modern "historians" rail against Fomenko's theories because they are both obviouly, intuitively accurate and totally opposite established thinking that most history books would have to be completely re-written. And no one who spent ten years getting his doctorate in convential history wants to admit that everything he thinks he "knows" is just plain wrong! I know it upset me at first, but the long, long list of explanations, "coincidences", facts and inconsistencies listed by Fomenko et al can't help but change your perspective.

These books are not the usual poorly-written, poorly-researched imaginative tripe provided by most "historical revisionists". This is the work of one of the world's leading mathmeticians and other highly-educated scholars. In fact, there is so much raw data in this series that even i, who reads constantly, have a hard time moving through it. But the subject matter shakes the very foundations of so many assumptions of modern history that it's worth every bit of effort.

Don't let the convcentional history proponents convince you these are false- read them for yourself. If you can read the whole series and STILL think the history of the world is what you've been taught then you might be right, and i might be wrong. But i don't think i am: Fomenko is a pioneer, a radical, a free-thinker and revolutionary in the field of scientific historical anhalysis!

Dr Fomenko started his research back in 1973, was badly mauled as ANTISOVIET and ANTIRUSSIAN. Nowadays the same crowd of Russian (formerly soviet) historians attack him on his Russian nationalism. Dirt cheap. There wasn't a single academic valid refutation of his theory. Forget about c14, the poor Nobel Libby must be turning in his grave after `calibration' of his method. By `calibration' on statistically non-significant number of wood samples from Egypt with ARBITRARELY suggested age of 3100 B.C. the Arizona university radiocarbon team simply smuggled the consensual chronology into c14 method of dating. Dr Libby honestly earned his Nobel by developing a valid dating method, too bad that this method became very un-precise because unknown tonnages of c14 isotope were dumped into atmosphere in the course of US-USSR-France-UK nuclear tests in the fifties, moreover it was turned later into a sheer fallacy by `calibration'. The dendro-chronology was ordered to expand its scale over 12 500 years, which is another fallacy as the number of ancient samples is truly non-significant. Just try to submit to any c14 lab a sample of organic matter and ask them to date it. The lab will ask your idea of the age of the sample, then it fiddles with the knobs (`fine-tuning') and gives you the result you've `expected'. True, Dr Fomenko's ideas find sympathy with nationalistic crowd, this sympathy evaporates as soon as they find out that in Fomenko's book ancient Russians are not Nordic Arians, but Turks and Tartars, that 1100 years of noble Russia are simply not there.

The major flaw in the works of Fomenko is that he takes Jesus to be an historical person and Fomenko spends a lot of time in dating the birth of Jesus on the basis of a supposed solar eclipse at the moment Jesus dies on the cross. However, as should be known from quite a number of works, the Gospel story is a parody of the yearly journey of the Sun - as Jesus - across the 12 signs of the Zodiac where the Sun "dies" at the Winter solstice (in the constellation of the Southern Cross). So, when the Sun "dies" the Sun is of course "eclipsed". This however, has nothing to do with an actual solar eclipse. So all this sorts of retrocalculations are absolutely useless. Removing this anchorpoint may lead to the insight that real and reliable history may in fact not begin until the 17th century.
As an aside: when will the publication of the remaining volumes 5, 6 and 7 be completed: with the present rate of publication I may not live to see the series completed!

This book is a major improvement over the last one in terms of entertainment value. It's still a crap book but at least it's entertainingly so. After giving us a vast chunk of pseudoscience in the last one he's returned to pseudohistory. Unfortunately for me most of the history he's messing with is Russian history which isn't my specialty. Since he's now writing about his homeland the true purpose of the books has become clear. His attitude is obvious from the cover of the books alone and the statement that "As te[sic] sign of recognition of the special role of the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of World History, the cover of the present book portrays Tintoretto's Jesus Christ crucified on the Big Ben." He has no respect for foreigners (especially the British) and precious little for "the establishment" (ie. those who disagree with him) in his own country. Russia is at the very center of his 'New Chronology' and he aims to keep it there. In this book he finally gives his nationalism free reign and gives Russia credit for most of human history.

A brief explanation for anyone not familiar with this book. Anatoly Fomenko is a Doctor of Mathematics at Moscow State University. Despite a lack of support from his colleagues (who consider his ideas on history nuts) he published a series of seven books in which he rewrote the history of the world based on his ideas of Statistics. As explained on the back cover of the first book, "Jesus Christ was born in 1053 A.D. and crucified in 1086 A.D. The Old Testament refers to mediaeval events. Apocalypse was written after 1486 A.D." The Roman Empire and all of Classical civilization was invented by Jesuit monks who wrote in a remarkably short time all of Western literature and invented an entire civilization which people then immediately forgot never existed. All Classical buildings are simply medieval ones that have been misdated.

And now the history of the world as outlined in this book: History begins when Andronicos Comnenos dies and becomes Jesus. History records him as an unsuccessful Greek emperor with no real successes who was beaten to death by the mob and not a poor prophet from Nazareth who was crucified but hey, what do they know. It's not like the crucifixion was an important part of the story or anything. Immediately all of Europe decides that they're Christian and march against the Muslims. It may sound confusing why they'd blame the Muslims for what was an internal coup but they were probably just confused because Mohammed wasn't born yet. At some point they changed their minds and decided to skip the first three crusades and jump straight onto the Fourth (except that they didn't. It was actually the same as the First. Obviously. Please try and keep up). They then sacked Constantinople which was also Rome which was Troy which was Jerusalem. At some point they get confused and occupied the Holy Land as well and then forget all about Constantinople and let it fall back to the Greeks since Jerusalem was now Constantinople which was Troy which was Rome. People back then had very short memories often forgetting why they did something before they even did it. Very sad. During the First Crusade the Greeks decide to avenge the kidnapping of their queen by... also sacking Constantinople. After sacking their own city they quietly vanish for a few years, probably in embarrassment. Some time later Erasmus wrote the New Testament confusing generations of scholars who wondered what they had been copying out for all that time. Having now written a New Testament it was decided that they needed an Old one. I'm sure the reasons for the reversed order are as obvious to everyone else as they are to Fomenko. Some time in the 15th Century David rose up, except that he was Turkish and ruled in Constantinople. Despite the many wars with the Turks Europe had never warred with the Turks and accepted all of these events as holy writ. After all, the Turks were really Russian in funny hats and the Russians ruled the world. The Byzantines were secretly ruling in England. After the death of Solomon (Suleimon) the Jews split off from Christianity because they were tired of not being persecuted because of something they didn't do and decided that being hunted by the Inquisition was more fun. In the confusion the Catholics and Orthodox Christians split apart as well because everyone else was doing it and it seemed a good idea at the time. They were to regret this later when the Catholics sacked their city but that had already happened so it was fine.

It turns out that Russia has dominated the world since the earliest recorded history (what nationality was Fomenko again?). The Mongols were not from Mongolia because the people there are nothing but worthless servants of the Russian Empire (it's ok. Fomenko assures us that the Mongols never knew of Genghis Khan until some pesky monks told them that they used to rule the world). Russia was actually the major Empire that the Romans were based off of and have existed since the dawn of civilization. Silly Georgians thinking they are anything but the personal property of Russia! Ha ha. They also controlled America, Europe and North Africa by 1300 so I guess that we should all submit to the Russian yoke as is our hereditary duty. Occasionally a czar would allow the governors of Europe (kings hah!) to wage war on each other if they pleased him. Presumably the English sucked up to him better than France which is why they did so well in the Hundred Years War but then lost his favor again which resulted in the French winning. Joan of Arc was probably the czar's sister or something. The czar could summon anyone to his court and they had to obey which is why Moscow is renowned the world over as being filled with better artwork and architecture than such dives as Paris and Rome (which isn't the REAL Rome after all). After Russia fell in the 1600s (through internal troubles. No one could EVER conquer Russians) the rest of the world immediately conspired to hide that they ever existed lest they should try to rule over them again. Thus they erased this empire from the history books and replaced it with such lies as Rome and the Holy Roman Empire (couldn't they even pick a new name? Obvious!). Thus the treacherous Romanovs rose to power (did I mention that he first published this under the Soviets?) and they too decided to forget there had ever been a Russian Empire of such a scale. Many "Roman" documents are simply Russian ones with a few name changes. Latin is merely corrupted Slavonic which is nonetheless written using the wrong characters and in a strictly unvarying grammatical structure. The Russians had it engraved all over their southern provinces on specific styles of buildings which they immediately buried and built medieval cities on top of to confuse archaeologists. It never showed up in Russia itself. Perhaps they punished the provinces by making them write everything in Latin. Oh those cruel Russians. After the late 18th Century things begin to return to what is normally called history.

As you can see it is far less confusing than the 'conventional' timeline. You might think I'm making this up but that is what you get when you put all his history together. Minus the sarcasm perhaps.

You don't even have to wait for the book to begin for the errors to creep in. The title alone presents a false dichotomy. Fiction or Science? As if those are the only two options. And I have no doubt that Fomenko does indeed see it that way given his haughty dismissal of anything even loosely connected to the Arts. History is too close to the Arts and must be purged of anything that isn't a string of exact, quantifiable numbers. All similar number strings must be combined into the same string, and any "facts" or "historical personages" attached to those numbers must be purged as well. Nice, clean math. But it's more disturbing than just that. These books (there are seven at last counting) are a vast horde of Russian nationalic propaganda. Apart from ridiculing any non-Scientists (AKA Untrustworthy Liars) the main goal of these books is to establish that Russia ruled all the world from North America through Europe into China and the Middle East, and they did so for most of recorded history. So his two assumptions about the world are:
1. All Non-Scientists are either liars or idiots.
2. Everything in the world originated in Russia.

One of these two assumptions is underlying every single one of his conclusions. He treats his random and unsupported speculations with just as much respect as ones that have been established through years of research backed by hard evidence. Linguistically too he is a dunce since he views all languages as being mere corruptions of the original Russian. Linguistics after all, is not a science. Neither is Art, Archaeology, Sociology, Geneology, or Anthropology. Thus they are worthless as sources of information and aren't even worth mentioning unless to state (not argue or prove) that they are wrong.

I am well aware that I have focused on his horrific distortions of Roman history in my reviews of his previous books. The Romans are my specialty so the errors there stick out more blatantly than do some other eras. While he does cover the Romans in this book I'm going to avoid them as much as possible because it's just making me sad at this point. Besides which, people may be getting the impression that his other history examples are more accurate. Prepare to be disillusioned.

As I said before, most of this book is take up reconstructing Russian history which turns out to actually be "Mongol" history. Having appropriated their history for his own he can now use any references to the Horde, the Mongols, and the Turks as simply alternate terms for Russia. Turkey is the odd one out there. The Mongols never conquered Turkey though they did conquer the Turks. But he has decided that the Turks and the Russians were a part of the same empire until the 17th Century. Also, all of the founders of the Russian historiographical school were foreigners. I don't know enough about Russian history to disprove that but I'd love to hear from somebody who can.

Now America has been kept out of these reviews thus far. That's about to change. Because the good old USA was once a part of Russia. Yup, Red Dawn was based off a real event. Apparently we were Russian until 1775 when the Russian wars between the Romanovs and Pougachevs split their empire (299). And Native Americans? Figments of our overactive imaginations. They never existed. The people who occupied America (or at least western America) were the Russians. And the proof of that is that the geography of the west was vague in the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1771. Were you expecting more proof? Well you don't get any. Apparently there is no other conceivable reason why the west would be unknown except that there was a great empire keeping people away. Nope, no other possible reason. I figure that this is part of his sinister agenda to give Russians the right to run casinos on American soil. After all, they're the REAL Native Americans yet we give privileges to all these phoneys.

Now the secondary focus of this book (after the Russians) is the English. They're not really English of course. They're really Russo-Byzantines with delusions of grandeur and an inflated view of themselves. So let's start at the beginning. "The so-called legendary history of England begins with the Trojan war" (568). So yeah, that's a neat assertion. I guess you're gonna use late sources that record a mythological prehistory as the basis for your "theories" again aren't you? (Spoilers: Yes!) So the legendary first Briton was called Brutus. Didn't know that? Yeah, it only shows up a few times and is generally ignored. Brutus was supposed to have fled from Troy and ended up in Britain. This is a pretty standard story for a Romanized state to create. Wandering Homeric (or in this case proto-Roman) figures were frequently used to prove a civilization's relationship to Rome. Since age gave respectability it gave them a more illustrious past. And of course if they didn't have one already, they had to make one up. Clearly it would be dangerous to base an entire line of reasoning on it, right? Right?!

Well gosh darn it, wouldn't you know that the name Brutus comes from Caesar's friend/assassin Brutus. Which of course means that they must be the same person. Now, Brutus the famous consul... Consul? Can't you even do such a basic fact check? Brutus wasn't consul. He was promised it for 41 BC, but in stabbing his patron he kinda nixed that idea. Anyway, this... consul, friend, and military companion.... Wait, military companion? What gives? He never fought alongside Caesar. Not once. In fact he fought AGAINST Caesar in the civil wars. Despite the fact that he "took part in many of [Caesar's] expeditions" he never took part in a single one. How can you get every fact wrong in such a simple, short sentence?!? Don't worry, that's the logical bit. Here's where it gets weird.

There is a somewhat complicated line of reasoning that goes as follows. Caesar's bitter last words were "And thou Brutus!" (602) So he's translated Shakespeare's verse into English. OK. Makes sense so far. Then he translates it back into Latin. Uh... And the translation reads "Tu quoque, Brute!" Or in Slavic "Ty kak, brate!" which means "How could you, brother?" Apparently the fact that a phrase can be translated into another language means that it was spoken in that language because from that he concludes that Caesar was speaking Slavic. There is no skipped step in there I might add. Nothing that I'm leaving out. He speaks in Slavic because Fomenko SAYS he speaks in Slavic and no other reason. It gets weirder when you consider that the Latin phrase "Et tu, Brute" was only used by Shakespeare. Suetonius records them as "Tu quoque, fili mi" or "You too my son." Dio recounts the same thing in Greek. So he's translating a Latin phrase from an English poet into English, then back into a different (but similar!) Latin phrase which he then translates into Slavic and from this he concludes that Caesar was speaking Slavic... I honestly don't know what to say. This defies all attempts at sane analysis. It only gets worse. Apparently the fact that you can translate it into another language also means that it is actually the same language. Latin doesn't exist. It's merely Church Slavonic deliberately mutilated to the point of being unrecognizable. Words cannot express...

OK, I realize that I went into Roman history again. But I was provoked! No man who has studied Latin should be told that it's merely corrupted Slavonic. Especially if they've ever seen Slavonic. Clearly the man has no concept of comparative linguistics. Well, I'll try to stick to English history from here on. I say English, but it's really German. Because East Anglia is Prussia, Kent is Saxony (=Scythia=Russia=The Horde=Turkey), Sussex is Southern Saxony, Wessex is Western Saxony, Essex is Eastern Saxony, and Mercia is Germany, or possibly Turkey (604). Brittany is also a state in England (581). Wait, no. It's actually in France. Didn't he even check a map? As you might guess there is no evidence for this except for similarity of names. The fact that the Anglo-Saxons came from Saxony buys no excuses from him. You might think that you just popped down the M2 and got to Kent, but in actuality you drove all the way to Germany without realizing it.

For this next part it helps if you look at page 581 of the preview above. It features a density graph of dynastic currents which compares the frequency which rulers changed at various points. This section is 450-850 for England and 200-550 for Rome (Sorry!). The reason why he chose these two for comparison by the way is because the documents dealing with the Roman occupation of England deal more with Roman affairs than English ones (580). Anyone surprised by that? Great. It's a pretty thin justification for the comparison but at least this time he actually offers one. Usually he doesn't feel the need. Apparently having two people who's reigns approximately coincide means that they are identical regardless of any other differences. Also please note that he unfailingly refers to Britain as England despite the fact that that state shows up only AFTER the Romans leave. Anyway, this graph is supposed to show the similarity between the two civilizations, except that it doesn't! You can see quite clearly that except for the fact that there is a general rise and then fall of instability there are no other correlations. And since he chose the two eras to compare even that minor correlation is insignificant. It would be like saying that both 6 and 10,000,000 are more than 5 and therefore identical. Worse still, the reason that the first part of British history is so quiet is because they were just freeed from the Romans and the records are nonexistent. There were dozens of kings ruling, we just don't know their names which means that the "low" at the beginning of English history is entirely artificial. So after proving himself wrong he then proceeds to state that the chart's similarities are "clear and obvious." Look at it yourself. It is nothing of the kind.

Time to look at a few of the kings he compares: Let's start with Egbert and Justinian. I have to admit, they make a fairly good match. Justinian reconquered the West and Egbert ended Mercian dominance of Wessex. And the regnal years are correct too. OK, Egbert is off by a year, but I'll take it. If they all fit this neatly his argument would have a bit more bite. The problem is the ones who follows this. Aethelwulf came after Egbert but Fomenko puts him third. Ruling before him are his two sons who in fact ruled after he died. Fomenko's correcting for a non-match by changing the order. He does this a lot. And he calls this science. He also gets Aethelred's reign wrong, but let's jump straight on to Alfred shall we? Alfred the Great is matched with Heraclius, which is another fairly good match except for two things. First, Fomenko has lost over a decade in only six kings. The time between Egbert and Alfred is 32 years while the time between Justinian and Heraclius is 45. The other problem is the difficulties with those coming before them. Photius was Heraclius' predecessor. He killed Maurice, the previous emperor, and started a bitter civil war that ended when Heraclius overthrew him. Aethelred was Alfred's brother. The two were close and fought wars together before Aethelred died of an illness and left Alfred in charge of the kingdom. I can't really think of two more dissimilar careers. As to their own careers, Heraclius managed to bring Rome back from the point of destruction by the Persians(good so far), only to see all of his newly restored territories conquered by the Arab Invasions. Alfred also managed to save his country from destructions (by Vikings this time) and he then continued to make ever more increasing successes up until the day he died. The first part may match up a bit, but the second part is the exact opposite.

Skipping ahead a bit we get to one of his wonderful periods of "Strife" which allows him to cover up discrepancies. As usual, he has made one up to match the other. Now the Byzantine one is real enough. Justinian II was a spoiled brat who was loathed by pretty much everyone. He singlehandedly brought the Heracleid dynasty crashing down. It took a few decades to recover from that. But the English one is phony. When Athelstan died he was succeeded by his brother Edmund, who ruled for seven years. It's true he was murdered, but it wasn't a dynastic dispute but a criminal matter. He was succeeded by his brother Eadred who ruled for nine years and then died of natural causes. Now the next bit has a bit of "Strife." He was succeeded by Edmund's two sons who each ruled a portion of the kingdom. Regardless, one was dead within two years of unknown causes so that strife sure didn't match the Byzantine strife of 32 years. Incidentally, the surviving son ruled for 16 years and was called Edgar the Peaceful. Not exactly a name you'd expect in a period of strife is it? But even if the "Strife" was legit, the fact is that he gives 17 and 32 years and three kings vs. eight emperors. They don't match even by his figures. Now my personal favorite of these is the last king of Saxon England, although Fomenko continues on with the Normans as if nothing happened. Harold Godwinson (the last king of Saxon England) is matched up with Isaac Angleus [sic for Angelus/os] (the first {and last} king of the Anglican dynasty). Now Isaac was king for ten years, but he was blinded and imprisoned by his brother. When the crusaders came through they put him back on the throne along with his son, where he lasted for a year. Fomenko has naturally switched the order again and matched Isaac's first reign with William the Conqueror's successor. Of course, in the other chart comparing the two he has Harold lasting until 1069. Now my English history may be a little rusty but I'm pretty sure that Harold died in 1066. You know, the single most important year in British history. When William the Conqueror conquered England and shot Harold in the eye with an arrow at the Battle of Hastings. I'm pretty sure I've actually been there. But I'll trust him because he's a doctor, and a doctor wouldn't make these things up. He's also jumped straight from Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus to Manuel Comnenus, a period of almost 200 years(!), without giving any indication that there was a gap. How can this man try so hard to be so stupid?

Now here is the new history of England as described by Fomenko: The "English" history of 450-830 is really a reflection of 13th-15th Century Byzantine history. The English history of 830-1040 is really a reflection of that same history only copied from the history of 450-830. English history of 1040-1327 is a repeat of the history of 830-1040 which is a repeat of 450-830. It's quite impossible to say why he thinks this makes sense. The number of years taken up by those slices of history are 380, 210, and 287. How that's supposed to work is anyone's guess. Aren't mathmeticians supposed to be good with numbers? The Roman conquest is simply a recollection of the Russian conquest. The Russians (ie. the Turks, ie. The Horde) invaded all of Western Europe, Asia, Western America, and the Middle East in the 14th Century. Roman history is a distorted memory of the 13th to 16th Centuries in Russia (ie. Mongolia). The governors of Britain were subordinate to Russia (ie. the Horde) and the Turks. Now far be it from me to impugn a "respected" scientist but there may be just a teeny bit of utterly loony insane nationalism influencing that summation. His desperation to get this "thesis" published outside of Russia (as evidenced by this translation amongst other articles) is also evidence of a positively planet-sized inferiority complex.

All right, one last Latin lesson alright? He's got a tombstone that is reputed to be that of King Arthur. It starts off as "Hic Iacet" which means "Here is buried" in Latin and is basically the same as RIP. But never mind that because he feels it's really Greek. HICIA[CET] is really NICIA which means "victory" in Greek. Ignore the fact that victory is actually spelled NIKH, that must merely be a typo. Please also ignore the fact that the rest of the inscription makes no sense in Greek and focus on the characters. The LATIN characters. The Greeks never used those. The Greeks used the letter K. C and K were not interchangeable. C is a Latin character and actually came to mean S in medieval Greek. So we have to choose between a Greek inscription in which only the first word makes sense (except that it doesn't) or a Latin one where it all makes sense and uses the standard Latin burial phrase. Except that a sentence later he's assuming that it IS Latin because he's translating Arthur's name. It reads Rex Arturius, ie. King Arthur. But no, he knows differently. It actually reads Rex Artu Rius, which means nothing in the Latin that makes up the rest of the tombstone but apparently means Arthur of the Russian horde (Rus means Russian but I guess that that's merely yet another spelling error. Why can't these writers spell the way Fomenko demands they do?). So we're looking at a trilingual inscription here which switches languages randomly with no warning and for no reason. I note he doesn't offer a translation of the whole inscription because by his reasoning there can't be one. The top part doesn't make sense in Greek and the middle doesn't make sense in Latin.

And now for the best part: The unreasonable, unsubstantiated assertions!
The Amazons are Russian. There is a good reason for this. Female warriors were recorded as accompanying the Golden horde. Also,... wait no. No, that's it. There's no other evidence to back that up. Huh. Now that I think about it that sounds a little weak.

A direct quote this time: "Some other customs that are considered 'purely Muslim' nowadays had once existed in the Orthodox Russia and possibly even originate thence" (132). Please note his poor use of English in using the definite article ("the") where it doesn't belong. Further amusing translation errors are John Sunter the Landless (ie. King John), Edward the Ancient (for Edward the Elder), and Mauritius for the emperor Maurice.

While the Holy Land was labeled in the Encyclopedia Britannica map of 1771 it didn't label Jerusalem (301). Therefore Jerusalem did not exist. All Biblical city names were invented in the early 1800s when the British first went there.

And that's it. This is the latest of these books to be translated at present. Hopefully it's the last. It is out of print which hopefully means it isn't selling well. But we'll see.

The book for the credulous. I guess he was not around when archaeo-genetics and comparativie liguistics redefined ancient history. What a waste of time and effort.

Interesting, especially map comparison. Russian armor with Arabic writing...... the only problem is, this book is expensivI'm glad I bought it though.

This is a must read book that should be studied seriously, and data -- verified. Can modern historians reject and/or find support based on data and evidence? So far, as I have seen, there have been no evidence-based works that show Fomenko wrong. I am sure reconstructing history would create errors, but if studying history is agreed to be a necessary societal endeavor, I think we should investigate all Fomenko's claims; perhaps even re-thinking and re-evaluating what is a myth and what is closer to reality is not a bad endeavor and investment. Clearly, a thought-provoking and potentially dangerous set of works!

Fomenko is nothing more than a product of the Russian intelligentsia's insecurity about Russia's place in the world following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The underlying theme in all his works is to establish Russia as the most important civilization in world history and to suggest that the Russians are the legitimate rulers of the world.

All of his number-crunching, all of his smaller theories are developed in support of this overarching conviction, which becomes more and more transparent in successive volumes of his work.

I have been to Russia as recently as this past February, having been born there and a constant visitor, and I saw first-hand the out-of-control frenzy among the people and the media to rewrite history and economics in Russia's favor. Meanwhile, the actual living conditions in Russia, especially outside of Moscow, fail to keep with this conviction of Russian economic and intellectual superiority.

This is simply a cyclical manifestation of racism during hard economic times, and writers like Fomenko emerge as an opiate for the public. This fascination with race and nationality as defining economic thought and prosperity is certainly a modern Russian phenomenon.
The Russian intelligentsia are always trying to fight "the Americans' and the British's convictions of Anglo-Saxon economic and intellectual superiority," but the Americans and British themselves hold no such convictions in modern times (in the past some, like Winston Churchill, certainly did).
It's a particular cyclical current of racism in this particular era in Russia that leads to the manifestation of works such as Fomenko's.