Alastair Macaulay of "The New York Times" defended Tchaikovsky, saying he "never intended his Chinese and Arabian music to be ethnographically correct". He said, "their extraordinary color and energy are far from condescending, and they make the world of 'The Nutcracker' larger." To change anything is to "unbalance "The Nutcracker"" with music the author did not write. If there were stereotypes, Tchaikovsky also used them in representing his own country of Russia. Moreover, the Votkinsk-born composer is also perceived as a part of cultural heritage of Finno-Ugric peoples (non-Indo-European).