[wozmirek]

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

[jxub]

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.