The crushing of the Prague rebellion as a sign of the Soviet Union's collapse is an interesting one, as it demonstrates the threat to tyrants everywhere. You will always be threatened by insurrection: if you deal with them gently, they will take advantage of you; if you deal with them harshly, they will internalize their resentment until it bursts forth with even greater force. The Soviet Union could not tolerate Prague because it might lead to the further destabilization of the Warsaw Pact. While the Brezhev Doctrine states that socialist nations cannot endanger international socialism, it was ultimately the USSR that decided what was best for international socialism, which turned out to be directly correlated (in their eyes) to the strength of the USSR. But the widespread, fast-growing nature of dissent proved too irrepressible for the Soviets, and the threat from within combined with the threat from without was doubly dangerous. The harsh response to Prague's liberalism was a symbol to the Soviet bloc and the world of the limited tolerance of the USSR for opposition to socialism within, but it also furthered the exposure of the state as a tyrant and contributed to the allegations of protestors.
The Prague conflict is discussed in Rock 'n Roll, a play by Tom Stoppard. He mentions frequently The Plastic People of the Universe, whose music became a symbol of resistance in Prague.
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