 In the early 1863 Aleksey Tolstoy informed Yakov Polonsky in a letter from Dresden that he was working upon "a large poem in verse "The Death of Ioann Grozny"… Two acts of it are being finished and, as people tell me, are good", he added.The deterioration of health hindered the creative process, but Act 3 has been completed by the summer of that year and in the end of 1863 the play was virtually ready.Some details as to the original draft of it have been traced through Tolstoy's correspondence with Karolina Pavlova who was translating the text into German, and was being asked to make changes according to those Tolstoy was making to his original text.