According to the common version, the words in the name of the world -famous novel are not antonyms at all. Supporters of this theory argue it with the spelling of the word “peace” in pre -revolutionary spelling. We checked whether this is really so.

When the collisia with the name of the novel by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy first arose for the first time, it is not known for certain. However, she gained the greatest fame after the television program “What? Where? When?" In 1982, the corresponding question was raised. Employee of the Leningrad Library Yuri Vartanov Interested inWhy in the title of the pre -revolutionary publication of “War and Peace” is the letter I (“world”), and not the usual “and”. The author’s answer read: “Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy wrote a novel not under the name“ War and Peace Time ”, he had in mind the wider name“ War and the People ””, “War and the Universe”. ” By the way, experts coped with the question.

After the transmission, the entertaining fact was dispersed by books and periodicals. An additional argument in favor of the theory was that in the epilogue of the novel Lev Nikolaevich really reflects on the emergence of wars in the world and their influence on the world. And we fixed the legend in our minds in 2000, as part of the anniversary series of games “What? Where? When? ”, Where the question in retro format was repeated with the same comment.

We turn to the facts. Indeed, Dahl's pre -revolutionary dictionary indicates:

“Mir: Universe; substance in space and strength in time; community, the society of peasants. "

“Mir: lack of quarrels, enmity, disagreement, war; Make, consent. "

Now let's take a look at the cover and the title sheet of the first separate edition of the novel (1868):

It turns out that the original edition was quite consistent with the classical (“war and lack of war”) to the perception of the name of the novel. What happened then? All subsequent pre -revolutionary publications of the novel also contain the word “world” in the title - all but one. We are talking about the very edition of 1913, one of the volumes of which was demonstrated by experts. But even there, out of eight cases (four on the title sheet, four on the first page), the ten I found in only one place - on the first page of the first volume. Could the librarian Yuri Vartanov, who probably had access to all four volumes, or editors of the program that prepared illustrative material? It seems to be a mismatch. But people tend to make mistakes.

There are two more versions of the origin of the error. The word "mir", bred by the hand of Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy, is found in the agreement on the first edition of the novel. Similarly, it looks in the work of Archpriest George Florovsky “Way of Russian Theology”, where the priest signs Tolstoy’s novel.

In conclusion, we note that a simple reader, of course, can be mistaken in the perception of the name, but it would hardly have been done by all hundreds and thousands of qualified translators into other languages that received such titles as La Guerre et La Paix, War and Peace, Krieg und Frieden, Guerrere E Pace.

So the version that Tolstoy wrote the novel “War and Society” remains only a beautiful legend.