Abstract

This article traces the appearance and development of pedagogical psychology
in late imperial Russia through Leo Tolstoy’s oeuvre. As one of the field’s earliest
proponents, Tolstoy majorly contributed to the debates on moral instruction in Russia,
arguing that the school system should never intervene in moral upbringing. At the
same time, the writer continued to teach moral and ethical foundations to the students
of his Yasnaia Poliana school. Using the play The Power of Darkness as an example, I
demonstrate that this simultaneous allure and threat of moral instruction was reflected
in Tolstoy’s fiction and subsequently affected his entire oeuvre. Furthermore, Tolstoy’s
pedagogical and aesthetic experiments with moral instruction influenced the perception
of both pedagogical psychology and theater as a powerful and subversive means of
education and upbringing.