Novgorod Republic

The Novgorod Republic formally won independence in 1136 when the people of Novgorod deposed Prince Vsevolod Mstislavich, after which its veche, or popular assembly, began electing and dismissing its own princes. Centered on the city of Novgorod, also called Veliky Novgorod, the republic's territory stretched from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east, and it expanded to include areas around Lake Onega, the Northern Dvina, the White Sea coast and parts of the Arctic. As the easternmost trading post of the Hanseatic League, Novgorod prospered as a commercial power and for much of its history stood as the center of Russian art and culture, producing the distinctive Novgorod school of icon painting; its government combined the veche, an elected posadnik as chief executive, an archbishop and a dominant class of boyars. The republic ended in 1478, when Ivan III of Moscow dismantled the veche and imposed direct rule, removing the veche's bell to Moscow as a symbol of the end of republican government and confiscating roughly four-fifths of Novgorod's territory.