What you mean by “people” is not what the Soviets meant by it.

Look at what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago about the word “people”:

“Have you fed the people?” “Have you sent the people out to work?” “How many people do you have there?” “Send me one person!” People, people, whom do they mean? That’s the way they talked about serfs. And that is how they speak about prisoners. One cannot speak like that about officers or leaders, however–“How many people do you have?” No one would understand you.

The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2, p 150

On a happier note, here’s a South Park excerpt with a song to “people”: