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The 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia was a watershed event for the Soviet Union. IMO it was probably the single biggest mistake that doomed the Soviets. Unlike the Hungarian Revolution a decade earlier, the Czechoslovakians were not trying to end Communism but implement reform. The Soviets labeled their "Socialism with a human face" as heresy and declared the Soviet Union alone had the power to decide what kind of Communism was appropriate in Communist countries, and that it reserved the right to use force to get its way.

This was the infamous Brezhnev Doctrine. It sent the message that there was no sovereignty in Eastern Europe and made clear the WP was nothing more than a buffer zone for the Soviet Empire. It would be as if the United States invaded France so that the French would submit to American ideas on Capitalist welfare programs and laissez-faire economics.

What if Brezhnev gave Czechoslovakia some leeway to experiment on its own? Certainly this would be risky for the Soviets as other WP countries will inevitably follow suit. Even so I doubt it would end as catastrophically for the WP as it did in the late 80s.
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