Abstract: The given research is devoted to a rather-legal analysis of the basis of political rights of a person according to the Medieval Law of the cities of Ancient Russia (Novgorod and Pskov) and Western Europe in XI-XIV centuries. The problem of correlation of democratic institutions typical for the Russian and Western European societies is timely nowadays. The authors of the article perform a comparative analysis of the contents of the prototypes of political rights of the citizens that were fixed in the legal acts of the Russian and Western European cities in XI-XIV centuries. On the ground of using the methods of comparative analysis, context analysis, historical and legal, systematic and historical, technical and other methods of scientific research, the authors make a conclusion that the development of legal rights in Novgorod, Pskov and the cities of Western Europe led to different sorts of political consequences and to different contents of these rights.  Democratic institutions in the city’s administration and other municipal bodies in modern Western European countries and in Russia take their origin in Medieval history.