Quote 1
"We don't even know who or what to fear, and so we fear everyone and everything." (1.65)
Katriana expresses this idea better than we ever could. Hmm… maybe she should be the one writing for Shmoop. Jokes aside, this is the perfect description of the way that fear works in the Soviet Union.
Quote 2
"It is just there are good people and bad people in all systems, and sometimes the good people are overwhelmed but the bad. It is power that is the evil." (1.61)
Katriana gets it. The moral of The Wild Children isn't that socialism is bad or that capitalism is good—it's that power is bad. You could be the nicest dude on the planet, but if you let power get to your head, you're going to end up doing some seriously messed up stuff at some point.