# The Power of Darkness is written as a dated peasant tragedy blocked from Imperial stage performance

Date: 1886

## The fact

In 1886 [Tolstoy](/people/leo-tolstoy)’s The Power of Darkness, a peasant murder tragedy, was ready as a dated drama but blocked from full Imperial stage performance by censorship. The instrument is that banned-play file, not the Kreutzer novella as a twin.

It is one event.

## Context

A written play refused a stage is still a rights-and-expression cost. Tolstoy.ru and the Cambridge Companion independently treat the censorship block. Later Soviet stagings are reception, not 1886.

Leo Tolstoy’s documented role is bounded by other offices and collaborators named in the sources below. Sharing a field with them is not a reason to drop a documented act, and it is not a reason to assign later consequences done in the name after death.

Conventional years are 1828–1910. Surviving public files are later museum pages, collected-works sites, and encyclopedias. Tolstoy did not typeset those later pages. Posthumous museums and editions are evidence, not acts.

Named person as heading of the dated public instrument. Later editors, museums, printers, or offices share publication. Complex where later carriers are the surviving public file.

## Evidence and sources

Tolstoy.ru and the Cambridge Companion independently describe The Power of Darkness and its Imperial staging ban.

Official or archival record: Tolstoy.ru — collected works and estate portal (https://tolstoy.ru/; State Tolstoy Museum / Tolstoy.ru).

## Significance

[Protection-of-minority-rights](/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights) / expression path as cost under censorship. High confidence on the ban pattern.

## What is established and what is not

Established: the play was written in 1886 and blocked from full Imperial performance. Not established: a unique national theatre-attendance series.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

Established here: a sourced, dated public instrument with a named contribution by Leo Tolstoy.

They are not a public rating.

The driver `protection-of-minority-rights` is attached because the mechanism named in Significance follows from this instrument, not because a standing list of welfare headings needed another tick. Leo Tolstoy did not file a later UNESCO form, a later Loeb colophon, or a later museum label as a personal act. A portrait or conventional bust is not this mechanism. Allegation, reconstruction, and established occurrence stay distinct. A banned play is not the Synod definition. Keep theatre censorship off February 1901. Keep the carrier date of later English distinct from the received historical year stored in the date field. Do not read a later English edition as a recovered autograph of Leo Tolstoy.

## People

- Leo Tolstoy: https://factrail.ai/people/leo-tolstoy

## Drivers

- Protection of Minority Rights: https://factrail.ai/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights

## Sources

- https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol0521792711
- https://tolstoy.ru/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/lt-power-darkness-1886