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Mr. Filin, who left Russia for a clinic in Germany on Monday for a rehabilitation that may last for months, made the comments in a telephone interview with the New York Times.He has said he knows who is behind the attack, but that he would not offer further details for fear of interfering with the investigation. A police spokesman told Interfax on Monday that the names of suspects in the attack would be made public only after they have been detained and indicted.

Mr. Filin said he stepped into a pre-existing power struggle in March of 2011, when he accepted the position of artistic director at the Bolshoi Ballet, which is the world's largest ballet company. That same month, Gennady Yanin – who occupied the more managerial post of the company's director – filed for voluntary leave after erotic photographs featuring a man resembling him were published on the Internet.

"From the first day of work, when I arrived, I immediately felt that those things that happened with Gennady Yanin" would continue, Mr. Filin said. "I felt that I became a continuer, the next participant in this story. As one might say, 'You'll be next.'"

"I am practically sure it is exactly the same story, and I think it is not one person – but I don't want to, and cannot, talk about this now because there is a serious investigation," he said. "I think it is a group of people who have their own views and ideas regarding the Bolshoi Theater."

Asked if members of the group would like to run the theater, he said, "I am sure that is the case."

No one was ever publicly accused of publishing the photographs of Mr. Yanin, who was widely considered a candidate to temporarily fill the powerful position of artistic director while the Bolshoi negotiated a contract with a permanent replacement. Mr. Yanin resigned swiftly, and never gave a public account of the incident, which some journalists dubbed "Pornogate."

"It was clear that it was someone who did not want him to become artistic director, unfortunately," said Tatyana Kuznetsova, who covers ballet for Kommersant, a daily newspaper. "But who? That is unknown."

Shortly thereafter, the Bolshoi announced the appointment of Mr. Filin as artistic director.

He had not been the first choice for the job, but seemed uniquely capable of managing tension between the old and the new at the ballet: A Bolshoi dancer and protégé of its iconic director, Yuri Grigorovich, he left for Moscow's second-tier ballet company in 2008 and established himself as an innovator, introducing modern European choreographers. Threats began soon after he took the job in 2011, his associates have said, and grew more serious toward the end of 2012, when his personal email was hacked and correspondence published online.

Katerina Novikova, the Bolshoi Theater's spokeswoman, said she thought Internet-based attacks on Mr. Filin and Mr. Yanin may have been related, but would not speculate on whether the same perpetrators had planned the acid attack.

"It might be all in one line," she said. "Or it might be some crazy person."

Mr. Filin, 42, said he met late last week with the team of investigators assigned to the case, and said they had compiled a voluminous case file and he was "very happy with the work they have done." Mr. Filin said they had questioned a large number of Bolshoi employees and reported that only four people had spoken critically of Mr. Filin or his work. He confirmed that detectives had been given a list of three or four names when they began work.

He also said the detectives were increasingly bewitched by the world of ballet.

"They told us, 'we never loved the ballet – we never even knew which direction to approach it from,'" Mr. Filin said. "Now they have become not just ballet fans, but they said, 'We have a big request: As soon as you get back on your feet, please make it possible for us to go to the Bolshoi as often as possible, because we have heard such a huge number of positive and good comments about you and your work."