The republic of Novgorod was the biggest Russian state by size, although not by population around the PoD. 1227, Yaroslav of Novgorod attacked Finland as in OTL. Without the Mongol attacks on Russia, neither the Teutonic Order nor Sweden dared to attack Russia, so there never was an Aleksandr Nevsky. Novgorod continued to reign in the North and slowly started to expand East. 1270, a rebellion of peasants against the rich boyars took place in Novgorod. The German explorer Markus Poller came to Novgorod in 1282.