Horace Lunt, a linguist from Harvard University, found it important to "admit freely that we are speculating" when the tales are reconstructed and the logical incongruities of the text are faced. According to Aleksey Shakhmatov, some of the incongruities are a direct result of the fact that "the ruling Princes of Kiev had their own propagandists who rewrote the annals to make political claims that best suited their own purposes." Shakhmatov further described the "Tale of Bygone Years" as a literary creation that fell under heavy influence of the Church and the State.