This article, in an attempt to add to the growing literature on Old Russian reported speech, considers the pragmatics of jako recitativum, i.e. direct discourse introduced by the particle jako ‘that, how’, a multifunctional conjunction with a variety of subordinating uses. Through a detailed pragmatic and quantitative analysis of corpus data, It is shown that in the Old Russian Primary Chronicle, jako recitativum contrasts two conflicting points of orientation, the narrator’s and the speaker’s. By using the construction with jako, the narrator expresses a negative and/or distancing attitude towards the content of the speaker’s utterance. The contrast between reported speech with jako and reported speech without jako is shown to be more significant than the contrast between direct and indirect discourse.