Due to the unusual and scandalous nature of the work for that time, the publication of the Kreutzer Sonata in a magazine or in a separate publication was prohibited by censorship. Only after a conversation between Countess Alexandra Andreevna Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy's great-aunt, the famous Alexandrine (a girl, chambermaid, tutor of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna) with Emperor Alexander III, did the emperor allow the story to be published as part of the next volume of Tolstoy's collected works.[3][4] However, the censorship ban only increased the attractiveness of the story, which long before publication began to be distributed in lists and read in private homes.
In 1890, the United States Post Office Department prohibited the mailing of newspapers containing serialized installments of The Kreutzer Sonata. This was confirmed by the U.S. Attorney General in the same year. Some American publishing houses published excerpts from the story as a separate pamphlet to advertise the story and distributed them through street vendors in New York for a nominal price. Carts even appeared in the city, on which it was written in large letters: “Forbidden by the Russian government and the Postmaster General of the United States is Tolstoy’s best work, The Kreutzer Sonata.”[5] The ban on its sale was struck down in New York and Pennsylvania courts in 1890.[6][7]
President Theodore Roosevelt called Tolstoy a "sexual moral pervert."[8]
