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Re:Poland was shockingly liberal during the 1400s by jxub on Friday August 17, 2018 @06:33AM (#17781708)
Strangely, Poland was left largely unafected by the Black Death so the cause of this social arrngement wasn't there.

The high regard for peasants in Poland contrasted with the neighboring East Slavic countries like Russia probably because of the influence of their Mongol rulers, but in the origin Slavic cultures were quite egalitarian and benevolent.

Re:Poland was shockingly liberal during the 1400s by wozmirek on Friday August 17, 2018 @07:00AM (#17781825)
Disagree with the high regard. As you said, it's not russian type of servitude/slavery, but at the same time, being a Polish (well, not really Polish - living in a land of a certain polish-slavic ruler) peasant was bad.

If the plague hit Poland, then... but that's a what-if ;) I find the difference is really well explained by the description of the Refeudalization process [1].

source: being Polish, currently living in Berlin

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeudalization

Re:Poland was shockingly liberal during the 1400s by jxub on Friday August 17, 2018 @07:49AM (#17782052)
There was a class of well-off peasants who had fairly comfortably lives, but for the most part I think you're right as that part of my argument was really hand-wavy.
Re:Poland was shockingly liberal during the 1400s by chewz on Friday August 17, 2018 @09:19AM (#17782574)
It isn't strange that Poland wasn't affected by Black Death. King Casimir the Great have introduced sanitary cordon and quarantined cross-border travelers.

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/16699/why-was-po...