Pskov Republic

The Pskov Republic, Lord Pskov to its citizens, was the north Russian city-state that won formal independence from Novgorod in 1348 and kept it for a century and a half. A borough of Novgorod that had tasted self-rule from 1228, survived a Livonian annexation through Aleksandr Nevsky's liberation, and served long and quiet under Daumantas from 1266, As a sovereign republic, it kept complete internal self-governance through veche assembly and elected posadniks and developed a distinct legal system, wrote the Pskov Judicial Charter that seeded later Russian law, and held its walls against Livonian knights and Lithuanian dukes through the fourteenth century, even inviting Prince Aleksandr of Tver in 1323. From 1399 it bowed to Moscow's rising star while keeping its liberties, sending its militia to Muscovite wars and its merchants down the rivers. In 1510 Vasily III ended the game: Pskov entered the Russian state, and the north's second republic closed its books.