In considering the early history of Russia, Novgorod deserves more than a passing mention. From the most remote antiquity this city was the political center of Northwest Russia, and from her location had a character of people and institutions peculiar to herself and quite independent of Eastern Russia in many particulars. Her character was Gothic rather than Asiatic, or Tartar. While her people seem to have possessed an insatiable hankering after a prince, the government was in reality a republic, in some points resembling that of the free cities of Germany during the first half of the nineteenth century.
According to tradition her foundations were laid by the Slavs of the Ilmen, whose origin is uncertain, some authorities holding that they came from tribes originally situated in the South, while others maintaining that they were Slavs of the Baltic from the earliest antiquity. At any rate, we find the Novgorodians at the opening of Russian history at the head of a confederation of tribes which exercised a powerful influence upon the course of events, and which was able by its strength to protect itself from many of the calamities which befell other capitals, notably Kief.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
