Veliky Novgorod
The Veche Republic
Portrait
Novgorod governed itself by veche — an assembly of citizens summoned by a bell — for three centuries, hired and dismissed its princes, and traded as the Hanseatic League's eastern anchor. Ivan III ended it in 1478 and had the bell carried to Moscow; the eleventh-century St Sophia cathedral inside the kremlin is the oldest church in Russia still in use.
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