Novgorod

That independence was safe only while Moscow stayed weaker. The grand princes of Vladimir had long been princes of Novgorod as well, and once that title passed to Moscow in the 14th century, the Muscovites pressed ever harder on the republic and the northern lands that fed its fur trade. In 1470 a party of boyars turned for help to King Casimir of Poland and Lithuania. Ivan III answered with war, crushed the Novgorodian militia on the Shelon River in 1471, and in 1478 marched into the city, abolished the veche and the office of posadnik, and had the veche bell carried off to Moscow.

Novgorod remained one of the largest towns of Muscovy, rich in flax and hemp, though its western trade never recovered after the Hanseatic kontor was shut in 1494. Its ruin came from the tsars themselves: in 1570 Ivan IV, suspecting treason, sent his oprichniki to sack the city, and in the Time of Troubles Swedish troops held it from 1611 to 1617, leaving fewer than half its homesteads standing. A century later the new capital at Saint Petersburg drew away what trade remained.