Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette.Volume XV

All except James, that is. He was still standing in the entryway that connected the salon with the bedchamber.

Red flashed him a grin. "Hey, you're welcome to join us, James."

"Just a country doctor, remember?"

"Oh, cut it out." Red jabbed a thumb at Melissa. "I know damn well she'll tell you anything important, anyway. And leaving aside the 'country' bullshit, you're a black doctor from one of Chicago's ghettoes, not some jerk MD who grew up in a gated community and thinks manicured lawns are a natural growth."

James smiled thinly. "True. But I spent no time at all meddling with black power ghetto politics in my youth, neither. Went straight from honest crime into the military." He waggled a finger at the three people sitting on the couch. "This sort of revolutionist caballing and cavorting is not my forte."

"Yeah, sure. But you're not given to blind trust in the good intentions of the high and mighty, either."

Nichols' smile grew even thinner. "True again. In those days, my opinion of Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara was unprintable. To say nothing of my opinion of Nixon and Kissinger after they took over." His shrug was as minimal as his smile. "You could print them today, but only because I picked up an education afterward. So, these days, I know there are alternative terms for 'lying motherfuckers.'"

After a pause, he said: "Well, okay. Why not?" And took a seat next to Melissa.

Red now looked at her. And then jabbed a thumb at Zaborowsky.

"I want to know if you agree with him. About the Ruthenians, I mean. We've been arguing about it. Well… maybe 'arguing' is too strong a word."

Melissa looked at Jakub. He was giving her a look that was far more placid than anything that really belonged on such a young man's face. "Placid," not in the sense of uncaring; but in the sense that he was quite willing to entertain notions that he suspected were wrong, but wasn't sure.

Impressive. Most political radicals that age were sure of everything.

"Well…"

She thought about the problem. It was quite a tricky one, actually.

"The thing is, Red, I think Jakub's attitude is the right one to take." She made a little face. "Although I'd recommend keeping the wisecracks about illiteracy and drunkenness to a minimum. The reason being, that any Polish revolutionary movement that isn't prepared to let Ruthenia go if that's what the Ruthenians want, won't be worth a damn. Sooner or later it'll most likely collapse. It's like…"

Red waved his hand. "Yeah, sure, I agree. That's why the UMWA banned racial discrimination at its founding convention, way back in 1880. It wasn't because white coal miners were all filled with the milk of human kindness and absent of all prejudice. Not hardly. It was because they were smart enough to know that if they didn't let black men join the union, the coal operators would use them as scabs. Some members of my family were active in the populist movement, too, way back when. I remember my grandpa telling me that what killed them was that they just couldn't deal with the race issue."

The last analogy wouldn't have occurred to Melissa, and it wasn't really that exact. But…

Red understood the gist of the problem perfectly well, obviously. Any revolutionary movement that demanded an end to privilege while simultaneously insisting that other privileges had to stay in place, automatically gave itself an Achilles' Heel. They might get anyway with it, to be sure. The American revolutionaries managed to overthrow British rule while maintaining slavery. But they had the advantage of an enemy who was overseas and preoccupied with its own affairs. Polish revolutionaries would be dealing with an enemy right in front of them, whose considerable power was not distant at all. And who, unlike the British establishment, was faced with the prospect of losing everything instead of just some far away colonies.

Jakub spoke up, for the first time since entering the room. "Here is what they would do. The leadership of the Cossacks, except perhaps the Zaporozhian Host, is not at all interested in eliminating serfdom. Their grievance is simply that the Polish and Lithuanian szlachta won't accept the Cossack starytsa as their social and political equals. But if they do so, the starytsa will be satisfied. And even stupid, stubborn Polish noblemen-even Lithuanians, who are more stupid and stubborn still-can face reality if their backs are against the wall."

He jeered. "Besides, they wouldn't even have to carry it out. Those registered Cossack colonels and atamans are every bit as stupid. All the Poles and Lithuanians have to do is promise them they'll give them equality. And then we'll have thousands of Cossacks to deal with as well as the great magnates and their private armies. Whereas if we make clear from the beginning that we will let the Ruthenians decide their own fate, when we take the state power, we'll gain the support of many Ruthenians and the Cossacks will most likely spend all their time quarreling."

He jeered again. "They're very good at that."

The sarcastic jeer bothered Melissa a little. There was a hard edge to Jakub Zaborowsky that she hadn't detected in his companion Krzysztof. It was understandable, of course. Unlike Opalinski, who'd been born into wealth and privilege and had the relaxed cheeriness that often came with such a background, Jakub had been born into a hardscrabble szlachta family. There was no way he could have arrived at the conclusions he'd come to if, probably at a very early age, he hadn't come to loathe and detest the bigotry and narrow-mindedness he saw around him.

In most ways, in fact, that hard edge would be necessary. In the years to come, if he survived, Jakub Zaborowsky would have to deal with Polish and Lithuanian magnates who were as savage and ruthless as any rulers in history. Their standard response to rebellion was a bloodbath; treachery and double-dealing came as naturally to them as venom to a viper. No revolutionary leader who was soft and sweet could possibly defeat them.

Still, a revolution could turn very ugly, if the people leading it started crossing certain lines.

She shook her head, slightly. Such worries were very premature, after all. So far, from what she could see, the "Polish revolution" amounted to a small number of young szlachta radicals organized by an up-time labor agitator and allied only with a small sect of radical Christians and-maybe, down the road-with eastern Europe's Jewry, or at least a part of it. They were hardly on the verge of having to deal with the problems and temptations of triumph.

Red cleared his throat. "To get back to the point. Leaving all that aside-yeah, sure, I agree nobody should try to force the Ruthenians to do anything-what do you think about the rest of it? What I mean is, do you think Ruthenians would be better off if they were part of Wallenstein's empire in the making?"

Melissa hesitated. Partly, just to ponder the question. Mostly, though, because she was feeling a little guilty. Morris Roth had asked her to come here in order to help her figure out how to do precisely that-absorb the Ruthenian lands and peoples into Bohemia's realm.

Which, she would do, and do faithfully, because anything was better than the situation that existed. But…

"Well, no, actually," she said. "Or, it'd be better to say, it depends. If the Poles straightened out their act, then I think the Ruthenians would probably be way better off as part of the Commonwealth than subjects of Wallenstein."

Zaborowsky was peering at her intently. "Why?"

"Because…"

She tried to figure out how to explain it, in a way that would make sense to a young man who came from this era and didn't the benefit of being able to look back on it from her vantage point centuries later.

"Because the worst thing about Polish history is that it was such a tragedy, what happened. It could have turned out completely differently. The potential that was destroyed was incredible. In the middle ages, Poland was as advanced as any European country, at least in most respects. And much farther advanced, in some. No other European country developed Poland's traditions of religious toleration and multi-nationalism, for instance."