This became even more obvious in the next stage of the reform, at the end of the 1410s. Around 1417 the norms of representation were trebled: the sources testify to the simultaneous existence of eighteen posadniki from this date, and re-elections of the head of state began to be held not once but twice a year. However, even this innovation did not remove the social tensions. In 1418 there was a mighty anti-boyar uprising led by a certain Stepanka. The insurgents flocked to plunder the monasteries, saying, 'Here are the boyars' granaries, let us pillage our foes!' The terrified boyars managed to calm the crowd down with the help of the archbishop, but it seems that in the course of this uprising the conflicts among the boyars' territorial groupings remained, and were criticised by the archbishop, as the spiritual leader of Novgorod.
The great anti-boyar uprising of 1418 encouraged the Novgorod boyars to carry out a new consolidation, in which the number of posadniki who were active at the same time was increased to twenty-four, and in 1463 to thirty-six (at that time they also began to elect seven thousanders). Virtually every boyar family in Novgorod had a share in power. The representatives of all of these families not only had the opportunity to be elected to the office of posadnik or thousander, but in practice they more or less owned these offices. It is revealing that the chronicle, when describing the events of the third quarter of the fifteenth century, frequently does not unambiguously name the posadniki. As a result of the reforms of the fifteenth century, which increased the number ofposadniki practically to the number ofboyar families, the title ofposadnik was devalued, and the designation of boyar acquired additional weight. It seems that in this period the terms 'boyar' and 'posadnik' were used interchangeably in everyday usage.
At the same time, the collegial institution of 1417, comprising eighteenposad- niki, five thousanders, the archimandrite and five hegumens (each of whom supervised the priors of the monasteries in their 'ends' and were subordinate to the archimandrite) acquired a certain resemblance to the senate of the Venetian republic. This similarity was recognised in Novgorod, as the following illustration demonstrates. From 1420, when the Novgorodians began to mint their own silver coinage, and right up until the end of Novgorodian independence, the coins retained the same design, the main element of which was the depiction of a kneeling horseman receiving the symbols of power from the hands of the patroness of Novgorod, St Sophia. This image was undoubtedly modelled on the traditional subject of Venetian coins, which depicted a kneeling Doge receiving the symbols of power from the patron of Venice, St Mark.
At the same time, the emergence of this oligarchic political institution fundamentally altered the relationship between the boyars and the other strata of the Novgorod population. Previously the territorial boyar groupings had fought among themselves for power, but now the consolidated boyar institution as a whole was counter-posed to the non-privileged strata of the Novgorod population. This new disposition of forces is reflected in the chronicle entries of the mid-fifteenth century which speak of the 'unjust boyars' and state that 'we have no justice or fair court proceedings'; and also in the emergence of a whole group of literary works which criticise the self-interest and corruption of the boyars and especially of the posadniki ('The tale of the posadnik
Dobrynia', 'The tale of the posadnik Shchil'). These attitudes were to have fateful consequences in the future, when the power of the Novgorod boyars at the time of its liquidation by Ivan III could not find defenders in the mass of the ordinary population of the city.
Meanwhile the confrontation between Novgorod and Moscow intensified from decade to decade. The famous conflict between Prince Vasilii II Temnyi (the 'Dark') of Moscow and Prince Dmitrii Shemiaka of Galich had an impact on Novgorod. Dmitrii Shemiaka, after he had been defeated by Vasilii, whom he had blinded, found refuge in Novgorod, where Vasilii Temnyi's vengeance caught up with him: Dmitrii was poisoned on the orders of the Moscow prince who soon afterwards - in 1456 - launched a military campaign against Novgorod. The Novgorodians were instructed not to provide any support for Dmitrii Shemiaka's son Ivan and his ally, the Mozhaisk prince Ivan Andree- vich. It is significant that it was in 1463, when the Novgorodians defied this prohibition - thereby proclaiming a definitive rift with Moscow - that the final stage in the expansion of boyar representation in the supreme institution of power took place. Such a decisive step could not be taken without a new demonstration of the unity of the boyar groups.
At this time the end of Novgorod's independence was approaching. Ivan III's anti-Novgorod policy was motivated by his claim that Novgorod aimed to transfer to the jurisdiction of Lithuania and renounce the Orthodox faith. Fearing Muscovite expansionism, Novgorod was indeed seeking an alliance with Lithuania and put forward the idea of inviting the Lithuanian Grand Prince Casimir as its prince. However, the drafts of a possible agreement contained special provisions for religious independence and the inviolability of sacred Orthodox objects of veneration. Nevertheless it was under the slogan of the defence of Orthodoxy that Ivan III in 1471 launched a campaign against Novgorod, which suffered a severe defeat in the battle on the River Shelon'. The initiators ofthe alliance with Lithuania were executed, but the institutions of boyar power were not altered.
In 1475 the Muscovite prince undertook what was this time described as a 'peaceful campaign' against Novgorod. He was met by delegations of Novgorodians all along his route, and thereafter he displayed a certain degree of objectivity in the judicial decisions which he made in response to complaints from the inhabitants of Novgorod.
The end of Novgorod's independence came in 1477, when Ivan III sent numerous troops against Novgorod. It is ironic that, as is evident from several documents, the Muscovite grand prince did not have the explicit intention of subjugating Novgorod. A folder which accompanied him on the campaign has been preserved; it contains documents which justified Moscow's rights only to the possession of territories along the Northern Dvina. The aim of his military expedition was to detach the Dvina lands from Novgorod.[24] However, as has already been noted above, boyar power found no defenders, and Novgorod fell into the hands ofthe Muscovite prince, who established complete control over the Novgorodians in January i478.The veche was prohibited, posadnichestvo was abolished as a symbol of autonomy, and the veche bell was taken to Moscow. However, the Moscow prince swore that he would not interfere with the landed property of the Novgorodians. This promise was broken some ten years later, when thousands of Novgorodian landowners were resettled on Muscovite lands and Muscovite service-tenure landholders were brought in to replace them.
Novgorod in the fifteenth century
What was Novgorod like when Moscow liquidated its independence? An answer to this question requires us to examine a number ofimportant aspects of its culture.
Only fifty years ago the conventional view in the scholarly literature was that the population of medieval Rus' was completely illiterate. It was assumed that the only literate people were the clergy and the princes, and that not even all of them could read and write.
Now more than a thousand birch-bark texts dating from the eleventh to fifteenth centuries have been found in the towns of early Rus', 949 of them in Novgorod. Calculations based on the characteristics of the cultural layer of Novgorod enable us to state that the site still contains at least 20,000 similar documents, written by people of the most varied social positions - boyars and peasants, artisans and merchants. They include a considerable number of texts written by women, which for the Middle Ages is the most revealing indicator of the high cultural level of a society. It is clear that the figure cited above reflects only a tiny proportion of all that was written on birch-bark in medieval Novgorod: the majority of such letters must have been burned either in the frequent street fires or in domestic stoves. It has been noted that the majority of texts written by authors of low social status date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
24
V L. Ianin, 'Bor'ba Novgorodai Moskvy za Dvinskie zemli v50-kh - 70-kh gg. XV v.',