3. Muscovy and the European Information Revolution: Creating the Mechanisms for Obtaining Foreign News

This deals with the systematic import of West European newspapers in the 17th century, made possible in part through the establishment of a regular courier service. The extent to which Muscovite Russia fully participated in this ‘information revolution’ that followed from the emergence of European modernity is to be debated. The imported newspapers were not for general distribution. They were, in fact, intelligence materials, with a readership strictly limited to the Tsar and his circle.