Novgorodian

The Novgorodians are the East Slavic people of Lake Ilmen and the Volkhov river; their city Veliky Novgorod became one of medieval Rus's great centres. Their Old Novgorodian was a conservative East Slavic branch distinct from the Kievan standard; it is known above all from over a thousand birch-bark letters of the eleventh to fifteenth centuries, notes showing literacy reaching women and children.

In 1136 townsmen deposed their prince and built a republic around the veche, which elected the posadnik, tysyatsky and archbishop; boyars steered commerce, while ushkuyniki raiders carried the fur trade across the Russian North to the Urals. The Hanseatic League's easternmost emporium, it grew rich on furs, wax and timber.

Novgorod kept its liberties through the fourteenth century under nominal grand-princely suzerainty, until Moscow's rise proved fatal: defeat at the Shelon in 1471 opened the way, and in 1478 Ivan III abolished the veche and annexed the republic; the old dialect lived on only in northern Russian dialects.