Veche

Veche (Russian: вече, Polish: wiec, Ukrainian: віче, Belarusian: веча, Old Church Slavonic: ) was a popular assembly in medieval Slavic countries.

In Novgorod, where the veche acquired the greatest prominence, the veche was broadly similar to the Norse thing or the Swiss Landsgemeinde.

The word is inherited from Proto-Slavonic *větje , meaning 'council', 'counsel' or 'talk' (which is also represented in the word "soviet", both ultimately deriving from Proto-Slavic verbal stem of *větiti 'to talk, speak') also related to "-vice" in "advice", and somewhat more distantly to Sanskrit "Veda", Germanic words like "wise" (English), "weten" (Dutch, "to know"), "witch" (Slavonic: věšt-ica) and many other.

The semantic derivation that yields the meaning of the word under consideration is parallel to that of . The contemporary words svedeniya (Russian: сведения) and svidchennya (Ukrainian: свідчення) both meaning "information" are cognates of this word.

The East Slavic veche is thought to have originated in tribal assemblies of Eastern Europe, thus predating the Rus' state. The earliest mentions of veche in East European chronicles refer to examples in Belgorod Kievsky in 997, Novgorod the Great in 1016 and in Kiev in 1068. The assemblies discussed matters of war and peace, adopted laws, and called for and expelled rulers. In Kiev, the veche was summoned in front of the Cathedral of St Sophia.

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