Novgorod Republic

A medieval Russian city that hired and fired its princes, and left the best record of ordinary literacy in medieval Europe. Novgorod controlled an enormous northern hinterland reaching towards the Urals, from which it drew furs, wax and honey, and traded them west through the Hanseatic League. Its government was the veche, a public assembly that could summon a prince to command the army and dismiss him when it chose - and it did so dozens of times. Real power lay with the boyar families, the archbishop and the elected posadnik, making it a republic in the practical sense. Alexander Nevsky defeated the Swedes and then the Teutonic Knights on the ice of Lake Peipus in 1242 while serving as its prince. Excavations since 1951 have recovered over a thousand birchbark letters preserved in the waterlogged soil - shopping lists, debt notes, love letters and a boy's schoolwork with drawings - which show literacy far down the social scale, unmatched elsewhere in the period. Ivan III annexed the city in 1478 and deported its leading families. Ivan IV sacked it in 1570. The republic ran from 1136 to 1478. Its territory reached the White Sea and the northern Urals. The Cathedral of Saint Sophia, begun in 1045, still stands. Novgorod escaped the Mongol sack that destroyed most Rus cities, protected by marshland. Its historic monuments are a World Heritage site. The city sits on the Volkhov near Lake Ilmen, on the route from the Varangians to the Greeks. Novgorod means new town.

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