There had been the Soviet crushing of the popular uprising of 1956 in Budapest, then that of the Prague Spring in 1968. The USSR applied the famous Brezhnev doctrine (never formulated concretely) of limited sovereignty of the satellite States of the Soviet Union. At a time when the Russians are paying a last tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at the age of 91, in the absence of Vladimir Putin, the last leader of the USSR was much decried in Russia itself for having accelerated the break-up of the Soviet empire.
