Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev (Лев Гумилев) was a Soviet and Russian historian, ethnologist, anthropologist and translator. He had a reputation for his highly unorthodox theories of ethnogenesis and historiosophy. He was an exponent of Eurasianism. According to geographer Mark Bassin, Lev Gumilev, whose books have now sold millions of copies, can be compared in terms of influence to Herodotus, Karl Marx, Oswald Spengler or Albert Einstein.