Pskov is a city with a very rich history, the capital of a mediaeval republic, politically independent from 1348. It is first mentioned in the chronicle under the year 903: "Of the city of Pleskov no mention can be found in the chronicles of on whose command and by what people it was founded. It is only known that it already existed at the time when Prince Rurik and his brothers came from the Varangians to rule the Slav lands... Prince Igor [the son of Rurik] was brought up by Oleg, whom he heeded in all things. It was Oleg who brought him a wife named Olga from Pleskov [Pskov]." Olga (baptismal name Yelena; died 969), the wife of Igor, mother of Sviatoslav and grandmother of Vladimir, is the most notable woman in early Russian history. She was closely involved with Rus' becoming a state and adopting Christianity. Tradition claims she was born in the village of Vybutskaya near Pskov.
Archaeologists have still not determined who founded Pskov. Finds show that there were three major changes of culture on the headland between the Rivers Velikaya and Pskova in the first millennium A.D. First people of the stone sepulchre culture lived here, then, around the 7th century, tribes moved in who built dwellings above ground with puddled earth floors, and only in the 9th to 10th centuries did the people arrive who built with interlocking logs, paved the streets with wood and put up the first fortifications. In the 10th to 13th centuries Pskov was part of Kievan Rus', with whose history the famous legends of Princess Olga are linked. At that time it was considered a satellite of Novgorod.
In 1499 Grand Prince Ivan III gave Pskov to his son Vasily, who in 1510 abolished the veche (popular assembly) and demonstratively removed the bell used to summon it. The chronicle reports that only babes did not weep with sorrow. 300 noble Pskov families were removed to Moscow; the inhabitants of Zastenye (Posadnik Boris's Town) and the Middle Town, where there were 1,500 households, were evicted. The money-grubbing of Moscow's appointed governors, unbearable taxation and executions led, as Karamzin wrote, to "the unfortunate inhabitants fleeing in droves to other lands... The foreigners... all left the place."
The Pskovian chronicler recorded bitterly, "Thus passed the glory of Pskov."