Just by way of comparison, the people of North Korea are in the same boat.
You are so right. Lived through that. When the Wall came down in Berlin, I was in Switzerland and had a coworker from East Germany. Her brother ended up committing suicide not long after. He felt he had been lied to his whole life about communism and that everything he stood for was a lie. He could not handle the cognitive dissonance. Those NKs will have some serious trouble, any of them who’ve bought the propaganda.