7. What Was News and How Was It Communicated in Pre-Modern Russia?

Now attention switches from producer and patron to consumer: what was the demand for ‘news’? What kinds of information were thought worthy of dissemination? Here, Waugh takes his investigation further from the kuranty, the Muscovite compilations of translated news from foreign sources, about which he wrote alongside Maier in chapter 3. Instead, he turns his attention towards other potential types of news that interested the upper echelons of society in Muscovy at the time, and how this was transmitted. At the same time, he explores what exactly news represented for the broader sections of the population.