Did Sergey Dovlatov say: “The war is beneficial to the mediocre. The world is always more profitable ”?

This phrase, attributed to the Soviet writer, spread widely on the Internet. We decided to check if he said something like that.

A quote about who is beneficial to war, indicating the authorship of Sergei Dovlatov find V Facebook* (for example, containing it fast dated March 6, 2023, he scored 116,000 likes at the time of writing), ""VKontakte" Twitter And Telegram. It meets in blogs in "Live magazine"And even in some media (for example,"Glavred" And "Flaw"). Some Internet users bring Its as an argument when discussing news.

This quote is neither in the exact nor at least in approximately similar form in any of the literary or journalistic works Dovlatov. It was also not possible to find it either in letters or in the texts of the writer's performances. The search is complete quotes or individuals her parts According to the database of the National Corps of the Russian Language - the largest collection of digitized literary Russian -speaking texts - also did not give a result. In some works of Dovlatov, there really is a division of people into talented and mediocre (for example, in stories "The march of lonely","Compromise","Craft"Etc.), however, in the context of the attitude to war - never once. 

Google Books really Found such a phrase, and in several at once books. However, in them it attributed Not at all Sergey Dovlatov, but satirist Mikhail Zadornov. It is worth noting that in social networksas well as on resources With different selection Quote The attribution of this statement Zadornov is more popular than Dovlatov. However, to confirm that the satirist had ever pronounced this phrase, “verified” also failed, although it was under the guise of Zadornov’s aphorism that she appeared On the Internet no later than 2009.

Apparently, for the first time the writer was mentioned as the author of this phrase on February 17, 2022 in the Telegram channel "The city of Zhupov". At least we were not able to find on the Internet earlier cases of such an attribution. The post scored 49,000 views and about 280 reposts. In addition to the statement itself, a photograph of Sergei Dovlatov, who was lucky on the sled of his son, was posted in the post. In some subsequent publications (for example, in the same post on Facebook of March 6, 2023) the quote was also accompanied by this photo or posted directly on it, although in terms of meaning it was not connected with it. This indirectly indicates that users saw a quote and photos together and distributed it without checking if such a writer spoke in reality.

Thus, there is no evidence that Sergei Dovlatov has ever said a phrase about the benefit of war for mediocre people-it is neither in his works, nor in any other texts written by them. The first mention of this quote in connection with the name of the writer, which we managed to find, dates back to 2022. It is unlikely that 32 years after the death of Dovlatov, someone found new, previously unknown written sources of his authorship containing this phrase. At least in this case, the news about the manuscripts of Dovlatov would have dispersed at least no less widely than the quote itself. 

*Russian authorities They think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, an extremist organization, its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Photo on the cover: sergeidovlatov.com

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?

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