The editorial corrections to the “Book of Mars” introduced by Grigory Poletika during the preparation of the second edition consisted of changes to the spelling of a number of words, updating of morphological forms, vocabulary and syntax of the first edition.
In terms of orthography, the main bulk of corrections were concerned with the placement of small and capital letters and the spelling of loanwords. The edition of the “Book of Mars” from the reign of Peter the Great had an unregulated orthography. In the course of editing, some spelling variations of words borrowed during the Petrine age were eliminated, and outdated spellings were replaced with contemporary ones. When choosing between variants, Poletika was following the etymological principle, opting for such standard spellings as attaka [attack, Mod. Rus. ataka], kommanda [command, Mod. Rus. komanda], Kommendant [Commandant, Mod. Rus. komendant], rapportovat [to report, Mod. Rus. raportovat], etc.
Capitalisation was not regularised in the first edition. While making editorial changes, Grigory Poletika used capitals for titles, military ranks, personal names, names of months and nationalities, but refused to use them for adjectives.
Despite the freedom with which eighteenth-century publishers and editors interfered with the vocabulary and grammar of the texts they printed, in the case of the “Book of Mars”, Grigory Poletika showed considerable restraint in the corrections he made to the language of the first edition. In essence, emendations were little more than occasional linguistic modernisations which never altered the syntax of the text being prepared for reprinting: syntactic emendations did not go beyond merging shorter phrases into more extensive syntactic constructions.
In morphology, editing was restricted to replacing selected nominal and adjectival forms. It is interesting that Poletika was relatively loyal to archaic forms which were associated with bookish, highbrow culture in the mid-eighteenth century (-ti infinitives, -i/-y Instrumental plural masculine noun endings), but he was more eager to replace those older forms which were by now considered typical of colloquial register (-u Genitive and Prepositional masculine nouns). Forms which were perceived to be bureaucratic were also removed (-tskoy [-цкой] adjectives, -tsa [-тца] verbal personal forms and infinitives).
On rhe whole. Poletika’s editorial policy reftects two major principles he was guided by: an extremely referential attitude to the culturally important text of the “Book of Mars” and a desire to make it somewhat more literary, closer to the writing standards of the second half of the eighteenth century. This means that Poletika viewed the book as one of the sacred texts of a new Russian culture whose language could not be aggressively tampered with.