Sovet gospod
The Council of Lords was, according to the traditional scholarship, the executive organ of the Novgorod veche. In Pskov, it was known as the Lords.
Novgorod the Great
In Novgorod, the Council of Lords was said to have been chaired by the Archbishop of Novgorod and composed of the posadniks, tysyatskys, and other important members of the high nobility. It met, after 1433, in the Chamber of Facets, part of the archiepiscopal palace in Novgorod built by Evfimy II.Valentin Yanin has argued that the Council of Lords was the real governing body in Novgorod and that it controlled the veche, which was merely a sham through which the common people were tricked into thinking they were participating in government. More recently though, Jonas Granberg has called into question the very existence of the Council of Lords, arguing that it is an invention of historians based on very sparse sources and much conjecture based on other governing bodies elsewhere in Europe.