I remember many years ago when the then Soviet Union sent the military in to arrest the mayor who was defiant. The people took to the streets as the tanks rolled in, and the military refused to run over and kill those people, in effect, stopping the coup underway. My views towards those in the Soviet Union changed that day as I witnessed (on TV) people willing to die for their principles by defending a man they believed in.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviet-hard-liners-launch-coup-against-gorbachev
Yes, I think people are almost never exactly what their political system/government is... I always think these two entities - we as human beings and our government and its system - don’t really reflect one another although one is dependent on the other in so many ways. Soviet times had lots of crazy, bad propaganda, drastic measures towards its own people (I think more people got killed in Stalin times than the official numbers of holocaust), destruction of culture, but there were also good spirits, people getting together to achieve what they believed in, etc. A very long and a very strange period in the history of that region indeed...