Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette Volume XI

The 'Time of Troubles' is a weak name for what Muscovy went though at the beginning of this century. It has perhaps made us a bit timid, afraid of freedom. It's so much easier when everyone knows their place and no one is allowed to argue or try something new. So much safer it seems. But I wonder, safe for how long?

The bandits are mostly gone from our roads and villages now. Surely that is a good thing. It seems worth a bit of freedom. What use, after all, is freedom to a man murdered by bandits? Is it worth, perhaps, the right of a serf to leave the lands of his lord? Some of those serfs might become bandits and make our roads unsafe yet again. Yet, why was this America, with its freedom, so rich? Where did its great wealth come from?

Much of it came from people leaving their work and striking out on their own. From people who left their homes and tried to do something that they had never done before. A man named Bell tried to find a way to make the deaf hear. Instead he found a way to send his voice and thousands of other voices thousands of miles along a wire. Another man, named Edison, hated transcribing the messages he received to send on. So he made a machine that did the job. This type of event happened again and again and made the land that the up-timers came from the richest in their world. Was it the freedom that did it? I think it may have been. For the same rule that prevents a serf from becoming a bandit also prevents him from becoming an inventor, or a merchant.

As I think of these things I can't help but wonder if we are beggaring our children to buy a bit of security for ourselves. The history of Holy Mother Russia that was written in that other time saw the fading away of the Zemskiy Sobor. It is barely even mentioned in their records. How did we allow that to happen? Are we, perhaps, afraid of the responsibilities of voting for representatives we trust? How will Mother Russia compete with nations that have spent a bit of their security to buy a little freedom for themselves and their posterity?

The Flying Squirrel

What Russia was, Natasha decided, as she set the pamphlet aside, depended a lot on how you looked at it. She had looked at it one way all her life now she was looking again. "Aunt Sofia, what do you think of democracy?"

The woman chuckled. She was tiny, four foot ten and weighed all of eighty pounds. Yet, when needed, she could put on such an expression of fierceness that boyars and bureau chiefs blanched. Fortunately at the moment she didn't have her game face on. Her eyes twinkled. "Bernie again or the one of the pamphlets? I don't know enough about it to have much of an opinion. From what I've heard, I cannot imagine it working, but obviously in some way it did. It must be different from what the Poles have that leaves their government so paralyzed."

"Well, according to Bernie, women vote as well as men, peasants as well as princes."

"I approve of the first and disapprove of the second. Peasants lack the knowledge of the wider world to understand the issues if a great nation. They lack the intellect for matters of state. Instead, they have low cunning." The eyes laughed. "Of course, I am a woman of the nobility. Were I a man – and a peasant – I might have a different opinion."

Natasha looked up at her smiling aunt with some irritation, then back down at the piles of papers on her worktable. The pamphlet on the cost of freedom and security was in one corner. In another were letters from Grantville. She picked up one of them. "Vladimir's friend Brandy wrote an answer to my question." Natasha felt her face flush a bit. She'd been wondering what life in Grantville must be like for weeks now. The Victoria's Secret book, along with translations of Brandy's letters, was in her bag for this visit to Evdokia. The czarina had been asking a lot of questions about up-timers lately.

"And what does she say?"

Natasha felt her face heat, with a blush. "So much and so… different. Brandy, she says I'm to call her Brandy, says that every person gets the same opportunities and it is up to them what they make of them. And that many, many up-time women choose not to marry and not to have children and not to live with parents and not… "

Aunt Sofia lifted her arms and patted the air. "Calm, child, calm. Stop and think a moment. Women do the same in Muscovy. Not all calls to holy orders are calls to God. Quite a few are calls away from the restriction of the outside world."

"But they don't… " Aunt Sofia was holding up her hand.

"I understood what you meant," Sofia said. "My point was that there was already an acceptable way to avoid the responsibilities of family. And how do these women live? They get jobs, I assume."

Natasha nodded cautiously.

"What jobs? Something like what your friend Brandy does in Grantville?

"Well, yes."

"And, Natasha, what do you do in the Dacha?"

Natasha stopped dead. What she did in the Dacha was run it. She used Vladimir's authority as head of the family, but she ran the Dacha. Her authority there was pretty much unquestioned. "I wasn't just thinking of me. Though I would like to see Grantville. Perhaps even live there for a time. I was thinking of all the other women of Muscovy."

"Of course you were." Aunt Sofia sounded doubtful. Then she laughed at Natasha's expression. "I know you were, dear." Aunt Sofia's voice was much more understanding now. "But all the women of Muscovy can't move to Grantville. What would the men do? Nor can we make Muscovy into a copy of Grantville, not without losing Russia and ourselves in the process. Quietly, calmly. Think each step through. Plan. You are a knyazhna, not a peasant. Consider the church, also. Think about what the church will have to say. If that doesn't calm you down, consider how most of the women of Muscovy will react."

Sofia held up her hand. "Consider," she insisted again. "If a woman can be a soldier then a woman can be made to be a soldier. Yes? Would you have women of the boyar class working in the fields like peasant women? Would Madame Cherkaski agree to have her status based on her position in the bureaucracy? She can't read, you know. And she heartily disapproves of those who can. It wasn't the men of Muscovy who poisoned Mikhail's first choice for a bride. Think about that. For now at least, leave politics aside and concentrate on the Dacha."

The sound of the toilet flushing woke Filip Pavlovich from a light sleep. That was the disadvantage – well, the largest disadvantage – of the toilets Bernie had insisted on. The noise. The sound of running water had the usual effect. He got up, threw on a heavy robe and headed to the bathroom to answer the call of nature. When he opened his bedroom door, he saw Bernie, carrying a candle and a book, heading toward the back of the house.

After taking care of business, Filip decided that he would investigate Bernie's whereabouts. Probably the kitchen, he thought. Bernie seemed to have a strange attachment to kitchens.

Not the kitchen after all, he was surprised to see. Another room close to it. Filip walked in just as the cook's assistant was lighting a few more candles. Bernie was opening a book, preparing to study for a while. "Another night owl?" Bernie grinned. "Feel free to join me. Anna Stefanovna will get us a beer and a snack if you want."

"Why aren't you asleep?" Filip yawned. "It's the middle of the night."

"Not really." Bernie looked at his watch. "It's only about 10:30. You know, that's one of the hardest things to adjust to, this living in what might as well be dark. I never used to go to sleep until about two in the morning, back home. Even after the Ring of Fire, I could still watch a movie on my VCR if I wanted to. I hate going to bed early, always did. Even when I was a kid it felt like sleeping was a waste of time. There was always something else I wanted to do."