The Death of Ivan the Terrible (Russian: Смерть Иоанна Грозного, romanized: Smertʹ Ioanna Groznovo) is a historical drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy written in 1863 and first published in the January 1866 issue of Otechestvennye zapiski magazine.

[5] 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 of the scenes that have been excluded by the author from the final version of the play looked significant, one being Boris Godunov's conversation with tsarina Anastasia Romanovna about her granting him trusteeship right over Dmitry after Ioann and Fyodor's respective deaths.

Both, according to Tolstoy, precipitated Tsar Fiodor Ioannovich, the second play of the trilogy and both have made their way into it later, although, as critics noticed, some fragments of which exactly the same could be said, have been kept in the original text.

[1] The messengerэs tale in the Scene 2, Act 1 was based upon Karamzin's description of the Pskov siege[8] which Tolstoy has taken numerous details from, moving them together, chronologically.

[1] The idea of expanding it into a trilogy came to Tolstoy while he was working on Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, but, as I.Yampolsky notes, The Death of Ioann the Terrible gives the impression of some future development of Godunov's character already having been on author's mind.

Besides, Tolstoy created new logical threads between Bityagovsky's taking part in the conflict between Boris and boyars, his agitation of the people against Shuisky and Belsky - to the murder of Dmitry.