[ariel]

Ian,
There are no contentions regarding collective, country-wise, quality of authorship. I was talking about a particular book written by a particular group of authors.

This book was mercilessly criticized on at least 2 Russian Fora for exactly the same reasons that were mentioned by me, plus some I have omitted, plus some I know little about. The only explanations offered in response were that they did not have enough time to research, and the objections from the muzeum to alter contexts of the existing labels.

Certainly, the authors did not engage in any malicious behavior such as willful falsification.

Please note that I have excluded books of Tirri and Astvatsaturian: their books were published before correct information became available. This is inevitable in any scientific endeavor and the authors, albeit mistaken, are blameless.

As to the access to Internet, both in the US and Russia it became available in the mid-1990’s ( see Wikipedia “Internet history in[country]”). I know it personally, since I communicated with American, European and Russian colleagues and searched their respective auctions and Fora for more than 20 years.