Ol'ga Sevastyanova: In the Quest for the Key Democratic Institution of Medieval Russia

In Quest of the Key Democratic Institution of Medieval Rus’: Was the Veche an Institution that Represented Novgorod as a City and a Republic?

In the twelfth to fourteenth century the veche did not represent the unity of the city and the republic of Novgorod. The word veche had a broad meaning and signified neither a decision-making institution, nor a whole-town assembly. The expression “all Novgorod” did not refer to the entire membership of the veche. Up until the end of the fourteenth century it was not the veche, but the oath-agreements of the citizens, ratified by the ceremony of kissing the cross or an icon that expressed the unity of Novgorod as a city and a republic. Only from the end of the fourteenth century or more likely from the second third of the fifteenth century, when more social groups were involved in political life, did the veche take shape as an institution of Novgorod republican power and began to be connected with the legal term “all Novgorod.”

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