ABSTRACT
It has already been pointed out that one of the main challenges of the studies of medieval Novgorod is absence of its official archive. 1 It obviously did once exist, but disappeared at some point. Most likely it was not taken to Moscow (the inventory of the Tsar’s archive does not mention any document which might have come from the Novgorod archive), and its fate is unknown. It could have perished in the sixteenth century after Novgorod lost its independence and its documents were no longer of great importance to the new authorities). 2 On the other hand, students of Novgorod may be relatively happy, as no other Russian medieval polity (perhaps except for Kiev and later on Moscow) has left such a wide range of sources.
