The Russian scholar A. A. Shakhmatov proposed that the extant copies of the Novgorod I Chronicle (Novg. I) and the Compilation (Svod) of 1448 ultimately derive from what he termed the Nachal′nyi svod (lit., “Beginning Compilation”), composed in 1095. Shakhmatov hoped that, by comparing the readings of Novg. I and the Compilation of 1448, he could determine the readings in this lost source text for the Povest' vremennykh let (PVL). Such a determination would allow him to approach the readings in the PVL not only on the basis of the extant copies of later redactions of the PVL but also on the basis of copies that testify to a pre-existing text. That way, when he found a disagreement among the copies of the PVL, he could use the readings of the Nachal′nyi svod as a touchstone to determine which reading was the primary one. This hope that Novg. I could give us access to the Nachal′nyi svod, which in turn would tell us the primary readings in the PVL, was one of the reasons Shakhmatov called the relationship between the PVL and the Novg. I Chronicle “the most important question of our historiography.” In practice, his edition of the PVL rarely adopts a reading according to Novg. I or the Compilation of 1448, because the relationship of Novg. I to the PVL is more complex than Shakhmatov had hoped. The Novg. I contains a number of readings that are secondary in relationship to, and apparently derivative from, the PVL itself. Other readings of Novg. I may go back to a source text of the PVL, but these readings have to be determined individually on their merits. In brief, Novg. I does not provide the shortcut, or quick and sure determination of primary readings, that Shakhmatov initially hypothesized for it, although it still has value in helping to establish what some of those primary readings might be.