They made their bed and they lay in it. The alternative was the Communist Party. It was the fact that these were the only alternatives that lay at the feet of the public, which points out the public's responsibility to have had better choices. (There was also a kind of Bolshevik revolution before the end of the war that deposed the Kaiser and installed the Weimar Republic. There was also no unified national polity. There are all kinds of excuses, but no other responsibility.)

Read more about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He conceived his duty before Russia and God to "tell the truth" or to "combat the Lie." He was only one man. Did he think he would prevail? They suppressed him. They exiled him, because he was drawing too much attention. But he prevailed. He returned. His masterwork, "The GULag Archipelago," is now required reading in Russian high schools (thanks to Vladimir Putin).

Solzhenitsyn simply brushed past the flimsy excuses for victimhood and accepted responsibility to combat the Lie. That's what we need to do.