i saw your post about illya being in an orphanage?? and i was wondering which your consider canon, given his attachment to him mother: that he was in an orphanage or that his mother raised him?
I personally consider canon whatever the actors say about their characters, so I go with Armieâs canon that Illya was placed in an orphanage after his father was sent to the Gulag. I figure that the writers had their reasons, character development wise, as to why they wrote Illya Kuryakin as the son of a traitor and the implications that go with that. Guy Ritchie encouraged the actors to come up with their own backstories of the characters as well, so Armie would have done his research as he was preparing for the role.
Here are some more reasons to kinda back up why I consider Illya being placed in an orphanage as canon. (However, despite my research, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is set in a fictional world, so Iâm sure Guy Ritchie took some creative liberties with the characters. I havenât done extensive research on this subject, so if anyone would like to add information or correct me, please feel free! I love to learn!)
After being caught for embezzling party funds, Illya Kuryakinâs father, would have been considered an âenemy of the peopleâ / âTraitor of the Motherlandâ.
Because of this, Illya and his mother would have likely been convicted and arrested for being family members of a traitor of the Motherland. However, after 1938, family members were no longer automatically arrested. The wife of a traitor was not automatically arrested unless she was deemed "politically untrustworthy or socially dangerous" or knew about the "counter-revolutionary activity" of her husband. Now I find this interesting, because after Illyaâs father was shipped off to Siberia, his mother became very âpopularâ with his fatherâs friends⌠So Iâm wondering⌠if she did know about her husband's activities, (which, given this post, itâs far more likely that Illyaâs father was a patsy and hadnât embezzled funds at all but was being framed), she should have been arrested, but because Illyaâs fatherâs so-called friends were framing him, they wouldnât want her to be arrested so that they could do to her as they pleased, or perhaps they threatened that if she didnât do as they wanted they would send her away like her husband or send Illya to a labor camp.  So now that theyâve discredited, made an embarrassment of, and sent Mr. Kuryakin to the Gulag, and evidently had Mrs. Kuryakin at their mercy, what use does anyone have with a rightfully protective 10-year-old? Illya is still the son of a traitor, so they will deal with him accordingly.
For being a child of an âenemy of the peopleâ, and perhaps being deemed "socially dangerous" because of his âpsychotic episodesâ, Illya was likely placed in a special-regimen orphanage. The orphanages had a particular view of children who were family members of traitors. The Communist Party had a âtheory of socially inherited criminality often informally described by the traditional Russian proverb, "an apple never falls far from the treeâ.â And, unfortunately, âorphanage staff often beat, underfed, and abused such pupils.â This coincides with the backstory of how Illya got his scar: ââŚas he was sort of going through the orphanage type schooling system of kids that theyâre trying to raise, he just got beat.â
âAny misbehavior was understood as the product of a counter-revolutionary upbringing, and punished harshly. Treating children like budding criminals had diverse effects. In some cases, the induced "class guilt" inspired orphans to prove their loyalty to the ideals of Communism.â
I think the above passage helps reveal why Illya had a âdisturbed childhoodâ and what contributed to his drive to became the very best, the âhammerâ, as his tattoo says, âto Mother Russiaâs sickleâ even. Â The orphanage, or some other interested party, also saw he âwas a physical specimenâ and âtrain[ed] him to become a spyâ. To show his loyalty, perhaps even to show he wasnât like his father, he became the youngest to join the KGB and became their best within three years.
I wonder what contact he was allowed with his mother? Would he have even been told what happened to her? Would he assume she was sent away like his father? Would he only hear rumors whispered of her popularity with his fatherâs friends? This is pure headcanon territory now, but as @tennyowithanunclespecial has reminded me, Illyaâs mother likely would have had a lot of influence and pull because of her popularity, so she might have pulled some strings to visit her husband in the Gulag for a brief few minutes. With this one-time opportunity, Mr. Kuryakin would want Illya to have some token of his love, so he gives his wife a watch he had acquired in the Gulag and has her promise to give it to Illya if she ever sees him again....
So years later (perhaps Illya is a young adult already in the KGB), after the Pobeda watch was made around 1945, Illya finally sees his mother again. He finally learns what really happened to his parents.
And he finally receives his fatherâs watch with a special engraving on the back.
