There is a lot of programming that leads up to these moments. The soviets were more than ten times more efficient at extermination than the Nazis were purported to be. By the time your food was taken away or you arrived at the gulag, you had already accepted it as inevitable. They created a society of distrust and disunity. Everything you experienced under the state was as if you were alone. The antidote is families and close communities. It's why the tyrants in the west work so hard against the household and the church.