When he received the Templeton Prize in Religion in 1981,
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn explained concisely the demise of Russia and the extermination of 60 million of her citizens:

“Over half a century ago, while I was still a child,
I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia:

‘Men have forgotten God;
that’s why all this has happened.’

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years
working on the history of our revolution;
in the process I have read hundreds of books,
collected hundreds of personal testimonies,
and have already contributed eight volumes of my own
toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by the upheaval.

But if I were asked today to formulate
as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution
that swallowed up some sixty million of our people,
I could not put it more accurately that to repeat:
‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this happened.’”

Let us pray for our nation and all nations:
That the Lord’s people, who are called by [His] name,
would “humble themselves, and pray and seek [His] face
and turn from their wicked ways,
then [He] will hear from heaven
and will forgive their sin
and heal their land.

(Quoted by Cal Thomas, in The Death of Ethics in America, p.27).