I was on a trip to the Soviet Union in the 70s when a couple of Americans in my group came back from a walk in Leningrad and told me of seeing a man drowning in the river with no one going to his aid, similar to the above incident only if sardonic comments were passed in Russian they didn't hear or understand them.

There is even a joke about an old man who falls through the ice into the Moscow River and the sentries on shore are ignoring him, so he shouts "Down with the Tsar!" so they haul him out and arrest him.