I would never have dared dream we'd get Arkady back! And yes I was just thinking about Dennis having the baby. That's great.
But Paige...yikes. I said in a different post that it seemed easy for Paige to dump Jesus for Karl Marx. I think she's happy to be bonding with her mother, but I doubt she has the internal fortitude to commit to the communist cause with the same fervor that Elizabeth and Claudia have. I agree with you that what she's doing doesn't represent real independence or even maturity.
One of the things that drives Elizabeth is a fear that was instilled in her from an early age of being disloyal to the USSR and the cause. She had so many influences in that direction, enough to make her never question it.
But that seems sooo different from Paige. She seems to just be looking for what she wanted in the church--approval, a feeling of belonging to something important and god, her mom's approval, being special. She has no actual contact with the country, just second hand highly curated stories from Elizabeth and Claudia. She can't possibly have really worked out how advancing the aims of the USSR is making life better for everyone. And it's not like religion where it's not supposed to be fact-based. If the church let her down, there's no reason this wouldn't either. Plus if she likes bonding with her mother and Claudia, well, what if they're not there anymore? She basically just joined a club to be in the club and it's a club of about 3 people at this point. She's even cut herself off from her father because he's not allowed to know anything anymore. Claudia's replaced him the way she wanted to back in S1.
I mean, even just looking at the two "teams"-Arkady and Oleg are in the prime of their careers in the actual USSR with plans for the future that we know is coming. They *know* specifically what their fighting for.
It occurs to me to that Philip is also the one with young family in the USSR, even if he hasn't seen them in years. In some ways it's like...his time has come. That sounds overly dramatic, but it's like the attitude he has is more in line with the country and it's reaching critical mass.
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One of the things that drives Elizabeth is a fear that was instilled in her from an early age of being disloyal to the USSR and the cause. She had so many influences in that direction, enough to make her never question it.
But that seems sooo different from Paige. She seems to just be looking for what she wanted in the church--approval, a feeling of belonging to something important and god, her mom's approval, being special. She has no actual contact with the country, just second hand highly curated stories from Elizabeth and Claudia. She can't possibly have really worked out how advancing the aims of the USSR is making life better for everyone. And it's not like religion where it's not supposed to be fact-based. If the church let her down, there's no reason this wouldn't either. Plus if she likes bonding with her mother and Claudia, well, what if they're not there anymore? She basically just joined a club to be in the club and it's a club of about 3 people at this point. She's even cut herself off from her father because he's not allowed to know anything anymore. Claudia's replaced him the way she wanted to back in S1.
I mean, even just looking at the two "teams"-Arkady and Oleg are in the prime of their careers in the actual USSR with plans for the future that we know is coming. They *know* specifically what their fighting for.
It occurs to me to that Philip is also the one with young family in the USSR, even if he hasn't seen them in years. In some ways it's like...his time has come. That sounds overly dramatic, but it's like the attitude he has is more in line with the country and it's reaching critical mass.