1635: The Eastern Front by Eric Flint

while Jozef was not an especially large man, or a tall man, he was quite strong.
    He'd broken off his account, watching. Opalinski nudged him again. "Grantville, Grantville. Let's keep our mind on the future, Jozef, not"—he waved again at the mounted archer, with a dismissive gesture—"this flamboyantly absurd display of prehistoric martial skills."
    Jozef smiled. "In other respects, no. Leaving aside the machines and marvelous mechanism, Grantville seems much like any other town. People going about their business, that's all."
    He was fudging here, but he didn't see any alternative. Not, at least, any alternative suitable for a conversation held under these circumstances. The months that Jozef had spent in Grantville had also made clear to him the more subtle—but in some way, even more exotic—differences in social custom that lay beneath the surface of the fantastic machines. He'd also come to understand that those subtleties in social custom were inextricably tied to the mechanical skills that were so much more outwardly evident.
    It was not complicated, really, if a man was willing to look at things with clear eyes. If you wanted your serfs to build and operate complex equipment for you, in order to enhance your wealth and power, then . . .
    Sooner or later, you'd have to be willing to end their serfdom. The American technology presumed a level of intellect and education even in their so-called "unskilled" laborers that no Polish or Lithuanian or Ruthenian serf could possibly match. And simply instructing them wouldn't work. In the nature of things, education can only be narrowed so far or it becomes useless. And given the necessary breadth, how could a sane man expect an educated serf to keep from being discontented—and, now, far better equipped to struggle against the source of his discontent?
    Nor was it simply a matter of education, as such. Another thing had also become clear to Jozef in the time he'd spent in Grantville—and perhaps clearer still, during the months that followed when he'd resided in Magdeburg. The sort of broad-ranging skills that were necessary in a population to create and sustain the technical marvels which the Americans took for granted also presupposed mobility of labor. There was no way around it. Not, certainly, in the long run. The needed skills for that sort of technologically advanced society were simply too complex, too interconnected—most of all, too unpredictable. The demand could only be met by a productive population which was free to move about at will, to learn whatever skills and apply themselves to whatever labor they chose. You could no more regulate it than you could regulate the ocean.
    Put it all together, and the conclusion was obvious. Jozef had come to it long before he left Magdeburg. If the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania was to have any chance at all of surviving the historical doom so clear and explicit even in Grantville's sketchy historical records of the future of eastern Europe—the Commonwealth had been the one and only major European power which had simply vanished by the end of the eighteenth century—then serfdom had to be destroyed. And Jozef could see only two options. Either the Poles and Lithuanians destroyed serfdom themselves, or someone else would destroy it for them. And, in that second event, might very well destroy the Commonwealth in the process.
    But how to explain that, even to the young man standing next to him—much less the mounted archer putting on this impressive display?
    The archer was Stanislaw Koniecpolski, who was not only the grand hetman of the Commonwealth but also one of its greatest magnates. The Koniecpolski family was one of the mighty families of the realm, not to mention one of its richest. They owned vast estates in Poland and the Ruthenian lands. The hetman himself owned sixteen districts and had a yearly retinue somewhere in excess of half a million zlotys. He'd even founded a complete new town—Brody, which