Was there a defeatist stance that the world revolution might not happen, but there still the Socialist countries needed to be maintained?
Was there a middle ground, like Stalin's idea of the world revolution in this late era of the Soviet Union?
Or was the revolution ''very close'' to the leaders of the Soviet Union like it seemed to be in the late 1910s/early 1920s?
Yes, Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev and the other 1980s politburo members still believed in the inevitability of the future communist state. Remember, the old men at the top of the CPSU were indoctrinated in the 1920s and 1930s, and then spent their lives deep in the party. Many members of the younger generations and lower level members of the nomenklatura may have lost faith, but the rulers of the USSR and satellite states were hardcore believers to the end. There's no evidence that the Eastern European communist leaders stashed money in Swiss banks in case of a rainy day - even the ones like Ceausescu who lived in outrageous luxury. That's because they believed that they were on the winning side of history.