That’s revolutionary thought for you; someone who is just a “citizen” might as well be an “unperson.” Note that during the French Revolution, the radicals called King Louis XVI “Citizen Capet” during the five months between the coup that deposed him and his execution. Capet was a reference to Louis’ ancestor Hugh Capet, the first all-French king.
When I first read “A Tale of Two Cities” with the absurd conversation between a man and a woman who carefully ended each sentence with “citizen” and “citizeness” (`citoyen’ et `citoyenne’), I thought to myself,
“It looks like communist rule began long before 1917.”