The departure of Oleg and Igor' to the south created a political vacuum in north-western Rus'. As a result of Oleg's breach of the agreement, there was no prince. In his place his representatives, probably headed by a governor appointed by the prince, remained at Gorodishche. But at this period Novgorod itself did not yet exist. Excavations in various parts of the city have not revealed any ninth-century cultural strata. Active settlement of the future territory of Novgorod began, however, at the end of the ninth century and the beginning of the tenth. This process coincided with the abandonment ofmany settlements in the surrounding district. We must assume that these two processes were interrelated, and that they were caused by the political vacuum created by the absence of a prince, which encouraged the tribal leaders of the Slovenes, Krivichi and Chud' to settle on the future territory of Novgorod, not far from the prince's residence.
The choice of this location, like that of the site of the prince's residence in the middle of the ninth century, was determined by its key position at the crossroads of the main international trade routes. Here, at the point where the River Volkhov flows out of Lake Il'men', the 'road from the Varangians to the Greeks' - the main line of north-south communication - intersected with the Volga-Baltic route - the main line of east-west communication. The active nature oftrade movements along these highways is clearly demonstrated by the numerous hoards of Eastern silver coins of the late ninth to the early eleventh centuries and, after the exhaustion of the Asian silver mines - hoards of Western European denarii of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.
Excavations have revealed the nature of the territory of the future Novgorod in the first half of the tenth century. It was not yet a town, but rather three settlements oftribal leaders, separated from one another by uninhabited areas. Around the central farmsteads in these settlements there lay arable lands crisscrossed by dirt-tracks. The names of these settlements, which subsequently provided the basis of Novgorod's administrative-territorial division (its kontsy, or 'ends'), indicate their probable original ethnic composition: Slavenskii (that is, Slavonic), Nerevskii (from the name of a Finno-Ugrian tribe, the 'Noroma' or 'Nereva') and Liudin (from the Slavonic word liudi, meaning 'people' - most probably this was a Krivichi settlement). The transformation of this loose pre-urban structure into a town took place in the middle of the tenth century.
In 947 the Kievan Princess Ol'ga, while putting the administrative system of her state in order, came to the north-west and carried out campaigns which resulted in the subjugation and unification of the densely inhabited regions along the rivers Msta and Luga. In consequence, the tax system of Novgorod and the amount ofthe state revenue more than doubled. As a result, the streets began to be paved, and there emerged a system of services and utilities, the construction of homesteads in streets, and other attributes of a town.[7] From this point it is appropriate to use the term, 'Novgorod', since it was then that the social centre of the new formation arose - the kremlin (Detinets), which was from the outset called Novyi gorod (new town) to distinguish it both from the three original urban-type settlements and from Gorodishche.
The development of boyar power
The newly transformed town exerted a magnetic attraction on the all-Russian princely house. In 970-80 the sons of the Kievan prince Sviatoslav Igorevich, Vladimir and Iaropolk, fought for the right to act as its prince, and sent their governors to Novgorod. In the end Vladimir emerged as the victor, and in his reign (after he had become prince of Kiev) Novgorod followed the example of Kiev in accepting Christianity (around 990) and acquired as its prince Vladimir's son, Iaroslavthe Wise. The first churches were constructed in Novgorod at the end of the tenth century - the wooden cathedral of St Sophia and the church of saints Joachim and Anna, whose dedication is connected with the name of the first bishop of Novgorod, Joachim.
Iaroslav's reign as prince lasted until 1015, when after the death of his father he engaged in a conflict with Sviatopolkthe Accursed (Okaiannyi) for control of Kiev. The Novgorodians helped him to achieve victory in this conflict, and Iaroslav rewarded them for their assistance by granting them new privileges. These included the declaration that the Novgorod boyars - the direct descendants of the tribal leaders who had originally invited Riurik to Novgorod - were not subject to the prince's jurisdiction.[8] But even before Vladimir's death, Iaroslav had in 1014 refused to pay the traditional tribute of 2,000 grivnas to Kiev. Only Vladimir's death prevented a military confrontation between father and son.
The privileges which the Novgorod boyars obtained from Iaroslav the Wise laid the basis for the division of Novgorod into two administrative structures. The boyars' homesteads, which were not subject to the jurisdiction of the prince, became the basis of the system of 'ends'. The areas which lay between these 'ends' were settled by inhabitants who were independent of the boyars, including free artisans and merchants. These districts remained within the jurisdiction of the prince. They were divided into 'hundreds' (sotni), and were administered by 'thousanders' (tysiatskie) and 'hundreders' (sotskie), who constituted the machinery of princely governance right up until the end of the twelfth century.
While he was still prince of Kiev, Iaroslav did something that was exceptionally important for Novgorod's cultural development. On a visit to Novgorod in 1030 he 'collected 300 of the elders' and priests' children, in order to teach them book-learning'.[9] Archaeological work has, however, shown that literacy in Novgorod had begun even before this date. In 2000, during excavations in the Liudin 'end' (to the south of the kremlin) in a stratum from the beginning of the eleventh century, there was found a set of three waxed wooden tablets inscribed with several psalms (see Plate 9). Investigations showed that this was designed to teach writing: the teacher wrote something, made the pupils copy what he had written, then rubbed it out and wrote a new text on the smoothed surface. At the present time the 'Novgorod psalter' - so called because the waxed tablets preserve extracts from the psalms - is the oldest dated 'book' in the entire Slavonic world. This was how the very first Novgorod Christians, who had only just been converted (at the end of the tenth century), learned to write.[10] Thus when Iaroslav the Wise set up his school in Novgorod, he was following an example which already existed. In the reign of Iaroslav the Wise the prince's position within the power structure of Novgorod was strengthened, and this was reflected in the transfer of his residence from Gorodishche to Novgorod. There it occupied territory on the Trading Side of the town, opposite the kremlin, which to this day is called 'Iaroslav's Court'.
After the wooden cathedral of St Sophia was destroyed by fire, the stone cathedral of St Sophia which survives in Novgorod to the present day was built in 1045-50, on the initiative of Prince Vladimir, the son of Iaroslav the Wise, with the involvement of master-craftsmen from Kiev. This is the oldest stone church on the territory of present-day Russia. At the same time, new fortifications were built in the kremlin, which provided a reliable defence both for the cathedral and for the bishop's palace which was situated alongside it.
In the last quarter of the eleventh century a number of changes took place in Novgorod which testify to the strengthening of the local aristocracy (the boyars) and the weakening of the power ofthe prince. In 1088-94 the prince of Novgorod was Mstislav, the young son of Vladimir Monomakh. David, the prince sent from Kiev to replace him, was expelled by the Novgorodians, who insisted on the restoration of Mstislav. This was the first clear demonstration of that 'freedom to choose the princes' which was to become the constitutional principle of the Novgorod boyars, who cited the invitation to Riurik as a precedent.
7
V L. Ianin, 'Kniaginia Ol'gai problema stanovleniiaNovgoroda',
8
V L. Ianin and M. Kh. Aleshkovskii, 'Proiskhozhdenie Novgoroda: K postanovke prob- lemy',
10
V L. Ianin and A. A. Zalizniak, 'Novgorodskaia psaltyr' nachala XI veka - drevneishaia kniga Rusi',