From a social point of view the constitution of Novgorod somewhat resembled that of Poland. Great inequality then existed between the different classes of society. There was an aristocracy which, while not depending upon the crown but rather of it, was extremely arrogant and powerful. First there was a sort of political nobility called the Boyards, whose intestine quarrels constantly agitated the city. Then came a kind of inferior nobility; then the different classes composed of the merchants, laborers and artisans, and, last of all, the peasants of the rural districts.
The merchants formed an association of their own, a sort of guild, around the Church of St. John. Military societies also existed bands of independent adventurers who sometimes made independent forays afar on the great rivers of northern Russia, engaging in indiscriminate pillage or establishing military colonies among the Finnish tribes.
The soil of Novgorod was sandy, marshy and unproductive, a circumstance which led to periodical famines and pestilences, resulting in great loss of population. These conditions also compelled Novgorod to extend itself in order to live, and she therefore became perforce a commercial and colonizing city.
Thus we see them exchanging iron and weapons for the precious metal found in the mines of the Urals and making their way around the cataracts of the Dnieper to the mouth of the river, spreading themselves over all the shores of the Greek empire. They traded also with the Baltic Slavs and with the Germans. When the latter began to dispute the commerce of the Baltic with the Scandinavians, Novgorod became the seat of a German depot.
The vicious commercial instinct which is so conspicuous in the Teutonic race to-day seems to have been just as marked in the early times when the Germans first got a foothold in Novgorod, in the twelfth century.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
