One of the patients had denounced a man eighteen years before to get the whole apartment they were living in together. He fears that the man, now free, might seek revenge. Others come to realize that their passivity, their failure to resist, makes them as guilty as any other. "You haven't had to do much lying, do you understand?" Shulubin tells the main character, Oleg Kostoglotov, who was in a labor camp. "At least you haven't had to stoop so low – you should appreciate that! You people were arrested, but we were herded into meetings to 'expose' you. They executed people like you, but they made us stand up and applaud the verdicts ... And not just applaud, they made us demand the firing squad, "demand" it!" 