I believe the current year of the show would be 1983, since we haven’t yet seen the transfer of power from Andropov to Chernenko.
As for stopping an invasion by the Soviet Union, I think the United States clearly had the military power to do so, but it seems that the decision of the various US presidents was to avoid at all cost a direct military confrontation with the Soviets, for fear of the consequences of having it turn into an all-out nuclear war…and even then, we had some close calls…1962 over Cuba and in 1973 over the Suez Canal.
I’ve always thought that all post WWII US presidents–from Truman through to George Bush the elder—deserved credit for the demise of the Soviet Union. They each fought communism in their own way, some more effectively than others, with the final nail being the US spending the USSR into oblivion with the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
In any case, I’m hoping we don’t have the thread deteriorate into a difficult political debate. Granted, it’s hard not to have that happen, given the subject matter of the series.
That said, the people posting so far have done an excellent job of expressing differing political and social opinions/analysis without getting personal. I’m hoping that continues, as I like the diversity of opinion. After all, reasonable people can disagree, and I can tell you that some of my closest friends over the years have been people with whom I’ve had strong political disagreements.
Q: Why are lawyers like nuclear weapons?
A: If one side has one, the other side has to get one. But then, when one side uses one, the other side has to use one and then everything gets all F’ed up!
I believe the show runners will keep Paige in reserve like their own personal H-Bomb. They won’t let her find out the truth about her parents until they find out the show is going to be cancelled. Then they will bring her out and they will end the show with their own version of the big bang! I’m not sure how it will end. But it will depend on just how angry the show runners will be and with whom they will be angry.
The vast majority? No. The kind of people at Paige’s church? Maybe. My parents at that time were involved in the El Salvador sanctuary movement, were strong supporters of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua (as was the current mayor of NYC, BTW), and my grandfather enjoyed trips to the Soviet Union to learn about their “socialism in action” (he finally took me on his last trip there, in 1990). My mom snuck into Cuba in the 1990s and went to see Fidel Castro speak, too, which she found very moving. My parents always seemed to have a lot of likeminded friends, at the universities where they taught and at the Unitarian churches they attended.
Looking at what the majority culture was like in the '80s obscures the fact that there was a significant minority, still millions or even tens of millions of people, who were very hard left. That was for that matter true a decade earlier, when the New Left was more visible on the streets but was equally impotent at the ballot box (Nixon won as easily in '72 as Reagan did in '84, despite the fact that everyone Pauline Kael knew voted for McGovern).
Even if I were convinced that that’s what triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union (and I don’t know enough about the topic to really have an educated opinion one way or the other), I wouldn’t give any “credit” to Reagan for it unless some memo surfaced proving that he and his administration actually intended that outcome.
If he honestly thought that SDI would work as a missile shield, and then there was an unpredicted side effect that it had a massive destabilizing effect on the Soviet economy, I don’t see how that counts as something he can be given credit for.
As for Paige, I don’t think it’s implausible that she could end up knowing the full truth… after all, some number of Americans in real life ended up so disaffected that they decided to spy against their country, without having their loving parents guiding them along that path. But it would certainly not be a quick thing.
Actually, I think that the Soviet system failed because it simply wasn’t sustainable. Point to SDI, point to Afghanistan, point wherever you like. It just didn’t work and once people realized that, the end was inevitable.
You are correct that even in 1980’s America there were many disaffected Americans unhappy with US foreign policy. In a country of (at the time) 200 million, you are bound to have all points of the political spectrum represented. But I also think you might have mentioned that they were “pretty hard left”, and I am just wondering if Paige is going to go that far politically.
I do think, that “vast majority” could accurately describe the sentiment of the time. Remember my reference to KAL 007? From wikipedia:
The incident was one of the tensest moments of the Cold War and resulted in an escalation of anti-Soviet sentiment, particularly in the United States..
A little over a than a year later Ronald Reagan won with nearly 59 per cent of the vote, and carried 49 states. Numerous factors may have caused that result, but it’s fair to say Mr. Reagan’s tough stance in regards to the Soviet Union played no small role.
In presidential electoral terms, landslides of that nature are rare. In a nation with such a large populace, winning nearly 70 per cent of those who voted might qualify as a “vast majority”. Even though voter turnout was just 51%, anytime you get almost 70 per cent to agree on anything, that is no small feat, and I would guess that result reflected the general feeling of the American populace at the time…even of those that did not vote.
Anyway, disagreement over wording doesn’t change my central point: the whole question about Paige refers to whether she would be on-board with the whole turn-against-my country thing given the anti-Soviet sentiment of the time.
I don’t think it has to be that categorical. Elizabeth’s pitch can be more along the lines of, “we don’t hate this country, we’re just frightened of the militarized fascists who are running it, and we want to push it in a better direction.” I.e., selling it to her that she’s not betraying her country, she’s claiming it for the best people. Start her off by having her befriend kids whose parents are in military or intelligence jobs, and have her practice light surveillance while visiting their houses. Killings and honey traps come later.
Why is turning Paige so unrealistic? She is their daughter after all. They have managed to turn bona fide Americans, why would they have a problem with her?
Phillip doesn’t want to. 2. Their cover with Paige is that they are her parents and travel agents, so they can’t approach her anew with a lie that matches up to her emotional needs. 3. She already doesn’t trust them because she knows they are hiding something big. 4. Teenagers want to get away from their uncool parents, not join them in being traitors. Remember, Paige thinks of herself as American. 5. They’ve lied about this to her, they would lie about anything.
** Remember, Paige thinks of herself as American.**
I think that is an important–perhaps most important-- aspect of this whole situation, and the reason for referencing the political tone of the nation during that time.
They were severely emotionally compromised before P & E got to them. Paige is quite well adjusted. It is certainly possible to turn Paige, but during the process, she will be only as controllable as any teenager who has just found out her parents have been living a huge lie contrary to some of the fundamental things she believes.
You don’t think the plump bald guy or Gregory thought of themselves as American?
Not really…at least in the case of Gregory, who seemed to be pretty unhappy with America from the get-go, even before P and E got to him.
If The Americans has any shred of realism, the lies Paige is being told will cause major problems.
I don’t want to bore with details, but I can tell you from personal experience, being lied to by one/both your parents is–to say the least—unpleasant. When I was around Paige’s age, one of my parents finally cracked and revealed they had been having an affair outside of the marriage, and they intended to bolt the family to be with that new person. We—just like the Jennings—seemed to be a typical middle class American family. In our case, that concept was immediately shattered.
The repercussions have lasted literally to this day.
When Paige finds out she’s going to freak…any other decision by the writers and the show will jump the proverbial shark.
Those guys were old, emotional damaged and hated the US. Paige is a wide eyed innocent who believes the schoolbook version of history and ideals, and she hasn’t been shafted by life yet. I agree that the way Paige’s character is written, she will “freak”, and come close to a psychotic break.
I don’t see it as much of a problem the way others do. Elizabeth is appealing to Paige’s idealism, so she is gaining some ground. If Elizabeth is successful in turning the politics of the day into something to protest - in addition to no nukes, Reagans stand on Apparteid, trickle down economics… left leaning thinkers had much to protest.
What I think will be the difference is Paige’s pacifism /peaceful protest something significant because it’s church sanctioned, as opposed to her parents “fighting” for the cause. So I don’t see Paige in any shoot em up spy role, but there are many ways to work for the cause. If however Paige is ever witness to what her parents do, the way Hans was blown away by their efficient hits and captures, then Paige would be horrified and want to cling to everything she knows as an American.
Without checking Wikipedia I can tell you that you are correct about Leonid Brezhnev’s passing in November 1982. But the subsequent timeline is:
[ul]
[li]Former KGB chief Yuri Andropov was in power from November 1982 until his death in February 1984. During his last several months he was seriously ill and absent from the public.[/li][li]Konstantin Chernenko then ruled from February 1984 until his death March 1985.[/li][li]Gorbachev took over immediately after Chernenko in March 1985. The world press enjoyed covering his (glamorous by Soviet standards) Raisa.[/li][/ul]
I have heard informally Andropov’s final bed-ridden months (late 1983 - early 1984) was one of the most dangerous periods of the Cold War. At one point Western governments were really expecting a imminent Soviet conventional and nuclear attack. But somehow World War III was averted. Can anyone verify that something like this was going on?
As I said earlier there are four basic levers that intelligence agents used to recruit assets, money, ideology, compromise, and ego (mice). The only one that’s going to work on Paige is ideology. While there were a lot of people with far leftist tendencies, it’s a far cry from that to actively working for the opposition.
Paige’s potential value isn’t as an operative, it’s for who she might become either on her own or as a spouse.
Just as an aside, were there any real life analogs to Gregory? Persons recruited from the civil rights movement who became active KGB agents. Now, Gregory even had assembled his own network, although it is questionable as to if any of his assets actually knew who was pulling the strings.