While merchants, especially prosperous merchants engaged in foreign trade, constituted a very important element in Novgorod, Soviet research emphasized the significance of landed wealth, together with the close links between the two upper-class groups. In any case, social differentiation in Novgorod increased with time, leading to political antagonisms, reminiscent again of Italian cities and their conflicts between the rich and the poor, the populo grosso and the populo minuto. Apparently in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Novgorod became increasingly an oligarchy, with a few powerful families virtually controlling high offices. Thus, during most of the fourteenth century the posadniki came from only two families.
At the time when social tensions inside Novgorod increased, the city also found it more difficult to hold its sprawling lands together. The huge Novgorodian territories fell roughly into two groups: the piatina area and the more distant semi-colonial possessions in the sparsely populated far
north and east. In line with Novgorodian political practice, piatina towns, with their surrounding countryside, received some self-government, although their posadniki and tysiatskie were appointed from Novgorod rather than elected. Gradually decentralization increased, Viatka, in fact, becoming independent in the late twelfth century and Pskov in the middle of the fourteenth. In addition, as has been noted, Novgorod had to struggle continuously for the security and allegiance of many of its territories against the princes of the northeast, who came to be ably represented by the powerful and successful Muscovite rulers.
Moscow finally destroyed Novgorod. The outcome of their conflict had been in a sense predetermined by the fact that Novgorod, in spite of its swollen size, had remained essentially a city-state. Not surprisingly, many historians consider the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries as the golden age of Novgorod, although the principality gained additional territory in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Devoted to its highly specific and particularistic interests, it flourished in the appanage period when it stood out because of its wealth and its strength and when it could utilize the rivalries of its neighbors. Furthermore, by controlling its prince it had escaped subdivision into new appanages. But it proved unable to compete with Moscow in uniting the Russian people. As Moscow gathered Russian lands and as its last serious rival, the Lithuanian state, came to be linked increasingly to Poland and Catholicism, Novgorod lost its freedom of maneuver. Moscow's absorption of the city and its huge holdings in northern Russia represented the same kind of historical logic - with much less bloodshed - that led to the incorporation of southern France into the French state. Social conflicts made their contribution to this end when class differences and antagonism grew in Novgorod. It seems that in the decisive struggle with Moscow the poor of Novgorod preferred Ivan III to their own oligarchical government with its Lithuanian orientation.
Novgorodian culture too developed in an impressive manner. The city had the good fortune to escape Mongol devastation. In contrast to other appanage principalities, it contained sufficient wealth to continue Kievan cultural traditions on a grand scale. And it benefited from its rich contacts with the West. While Russian culture in the appanage period will be discussed in a later chapter, it is appropriate to note here that Novgorod became famous for its church architecture and its icon-painting, as well as for its vigorous and varied literature.
Moreover, it was in Novgorod that a Soviet search uncovered some seven hundred so-called birchbark documents, usually succinct businesslike notes or messages, which suggest a considerable spread of literacy among the general population of that city and area. Novgorodian literature embraced the writings of such archbishops of the city as Moses and Basil, travelogues, in particular accounts of visits to the Holy Land, and extremely
useful chronicles, together with an oral tradition which included a special cycle of byliny. The oldest surviving Russian, that is, Church Slavonic, manuscript, the illuminated so-called Ostromirovo Gospel of 1056-57, comes from Novgorod. Indeed, as is frequently the case, the culture of Novgorod survived the political downfall of the city to exercise a considerable influence on Moscow and on Russia in general.
Specialists have cited certain characteristics of Novgorodian culture as reflecting the peculiar nature and history of that city-state. The Chronicle of Novgorod and other Novgorodian writings express a strong and constant attachment to the city, its streets, buildings, and affairs. Moreover, the whole general tone of Novgorodian literature has been described as strikingly realistic, pragmatic, and businesslike, even when dealing with religious issues. For example, Archbishop Basil adduced the following arguments, among others, to prove that paradise was located on earth rather than in heaven or in imagination: four terrestrial rivers flow from paradise, one of which, the Nile, Basil described with some relish; St. Macarius lived near paradise; St. Efrosimius even visited paradise and brought back to his abbot three apples, while St. Agapius took some bread there; two Novgorodian boats once reached the paradise mountain as they sailed in a distant sea. Together with realism and practicality went energy and bustle, manifested, for example, in constant building - about one hundred stone churches were erected in the city in the last two centuries of its independence. Visitors described the Novgorodians as an extremely vigorous and active people, whose women were equal to men and prominent in the affairs of the city.
The heroes of Novgorodian literature also reflect the life of the city. The main protagonists of the Novgorodian cycle of byliny included the extraordinary businessman and traveler, merchant Sadko, and the irrepressible and irresponsible young giant Basil Buslaev, whose bloody forays against his neighbors could be checked only by his mother. Buslaev's death illustrates well his behavior: given the choice by a skull to jump in one direction and live or to jump in another and perish, he naturally chose the second and cracked his head. Buslaev has been cited as a genuine representative of the free adventurers of Novgorod, who did so much to spread the sway of their city over enormous lands populated both by Russians and by Finnic-speaking and other tribes.
The history of Novgorod, remarkable in itself, attracts further attention as one variant in the evolution of the lands of Kievan Russia after the decline of Kiev. While it is usual to emphasize the peculiar qualities of Novgorod, it is important to realize also that these qualities stemmed directly from the Kievan - and to some extent pre-Kievan - period and represented, sometimes in an accentuated manner, certain salient Kievan characteristics. The urban life and culture of Novgorod, the important position