"Revolts" in the Kuranty of March–July 1671 I NGRID MAIER, STEPAN SHAMIN I NTRODUCTION The kuranty are the surveys of the foreign press prepared for the Tsar and Boyar Council starting in the middle of the 17 th century. It is impossible to determine when the practice of their compilation began, since it developed gradually over many years. The kuranty began to be compiled on a regular basis in 1665, when a contract was concluded between the foreigner Jan van Sweeden and the Chancery of Privy Affairs (the organ concerned with questions of personal interest to Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich) for the organization of the Riga post, which was to supply Moscow on a bi-weekly basis with foreign newspapers. 1 Starting in September 1668, the Riga post arrived weekly, and beginning in March 1669 a second post, located in Vilna, also began to operate weekly. 2 The kuranty were read to the Tsar and members of the Boyar Council. In the second half of the 17 th century, they were the basic source of operative information for the Russian government about the political situation in Europe. 3 The kuranty used in this manner were filed in the archive of the Diplomatic Chancery. Today, the main collection of them is pre- served in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA, f. 155). The main aim of our essay is to show which articles in the European press con- cerning social conflicts such as disorders, plots, revolts, uprisings and popular 1 Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka, ed. Imperatorskoi Arkheograficheskoi komissiei, t. 21. Dela Tainogo prikaza, kn. 1 (Sankt Peterburg, 1907), stb. 1065. 2 I. P. Kozlovskii, Pervye pochty i pervye pochtmeistery v Moskovskom gosudarstve, 2 toma (Varshava, 1913), 2: 36–37. 3 E. I. Kobzareva, "Izvestiia o sobytiiakh v Zapadnoi Evrope v dokumentakh Posol'skogo prikaza XVII veka" (Dissertatsiia na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni kand. ist. nauk, Moskva, 1988 [unpublished]), 178.