My first instinct would, of course, be cynicism: to say that the Warsaw Pact states regarding internal revolutions as bourgeois-funded coup attempts was nothing more than geopolitics, a rationale for the Soviet Union to use force to maintain its sphere of influence despite legitimate grievances being a significant cause behind the upheaval. But that elides the perspectives of people who grew up in the region and lived as earnest communists, and it's that perspective I want to understand. Among the politicians--including the highest-placed politicians--was the stated belief that these revolutions were bourgeois in nature truly believed? Was such a class-based understanding of society accepted to that degree among the political elite--would they have really believed it came down solely (or almost solely) to class, or at least that the West really did fund the revolutionaries as part of a coup attempt? Or did these politicians have a cynicism about their own system that led them, perhaps, to privately acknowledge that the revolutions were based on legitimate concerns, but to frame them as bourgeois out of ideological and geopolitical necessity?
Hello there!
Your question is very understandable to me, and I understand that when people (myself included) look back upon history, the naked self-serving cynicism of the rich and/or powerful seems quite obvious. Let's call it the -cynical interpretation- of history.
Especially historical figures and subjects like Stalin, Hitler & Nazism, and the Cold War seem to lend themselves for the idea that it was all about power and using whatever means necessary to keep it.
This is not necessarily a "wrong" take: its hard to deny that Stalin, Hitler, or the Warsaw Pact regimes for that matter maximized and protected their power using all necessary means.
That doesn't mean they didn't actually believe in their stated mission/ideology. The crushing of the Hungarian Revolution or the Prague Spring was both an act of self-preservation as it was ideologically justifiable: the Socialist regime must survive by whatever means necessary or else there can be no Socialism. So the goals of building a socialist society, sometimes through brutal force, did in the eyes of the regimes not contradict their ideals. On the contrary, as hardened Stalinists who themselves had experienced Nazi torture in some cases, everything -should- be done to secure and hold power for the Communists.
On top of that, Socialist regimes often tended to delude themselves with the fantasy that the silent majority supported them. Such delusions drove the most deluded ones like Dubcek and Gorbachev to announce free elections, as they were convinced the masses would vote for them. Rebellion and dissent were "externalized", seen as the work of a handful of counterrevolutionaries controlled from abroad - probably by the US, or Israel, or both. The KGB and its satellite services constantly fed their leaders with conspiracy theories that anti-Socialist emigré groups, the CIA and the West were either actively aiding or ideologically inciting "subversive" activities against the Socialist system. To a degree, dissent and resistance was encouraged or even supported from abroad. That was enough for Soviet leaders to believe the silent majority was with them whilst the few critical voices were being controlled from abroad. We know for example from the Chernyaev diaries, a speech writer of Brezhnev, that he really believed the people loved him. On his birthday Brezhnev would read the praising letters of ordinary citizens adressed to him, and be brought to tears by their affectionate words. A classic example of how dictators come to believe in their own cult of personality.
Nevertheless, the few critics needed to be treated harshly because the KGB believed in a sort of snowball-effect. Just as the West had managed to brainwash a few Russian dissidents or activists, if left to their own, they would soon recruit and turn many more against the regime until they had enough people to launch an insurrection like in Hungary. This is why the KGB invented the so-called "prophylactic measures", in which it actively warned (or intimidated) citizens with critical opinions.
By externalizing dissent and opposition as something foreign, opposition became regarded as something treasonous, threatening and undermining the strength of Socialism in its ideological struggle with the West. Since the victory of Socialism was all that mattered, any form of undermining its legitimacy was potentially subversive, treasonous and criminal.
That doesn't mean that within Communist regimes there were no internal disagreements over how far this logic should go. And in fact, the Prague Spring was a very divisive issue. After it had been crushed, many inside the Soviet system and even the KGB wished to forget about it as soon as possible, because they felt it was immoral. It needed to be done however in the context of maintaining the balance of forces and status quo in Europe.
Here we get sucked into the mental gymnastics that was increasingly necessary among the Communist elites to rationalize their policies. The brutal intervention in Czechoslovakia to end its democratization was felt to be both immoral, and necessary to preserve the Warsaw Pact as a whole and to maintain the international position of the Socialist bloc. Nevertheless, many really did lose their faith in the supposed moral superiority of Socialism after that.
The East-German intelligence chief Markus Wolf once quoted from a poem "what baseness would you not commit to stamp out baseness?" He was describing the mentality of the East-German Stasi when it resorted to aiding terrorist groups in the West. This is the totalitarian logic that forms an ugly mix of cynicism (in methods) and fanatic ideological conviction. The victory of Socialism justified all actions.
Although we cannot look inside the heads of those that were in charge of crushing the Hungarian Revolution or the Prague Spring, what they really thought they were doing was probably a complex mixture of ideological conviction, delusion, self-serving cynicism, and a whole range of psychological mechanisms at play that serve to protect one's consciousness after committing a crime. It was therefore probably less a matter of either/or, but a combination.
As people often say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I hope that this answer is somewhat useful to you.
I can recommend the 3 Cambridge History of the Cold War volumes for further reading, but also the Anatoly Chernyaev diaries to get a peek into the daily logic of those running the Soviet system.
Furthermore Vladislav Zubok's "A Failed Empire: the history of the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev" remains a classic to learn more about how Soviet leaders saw their world.
Gunter Bischof's (editor) "The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of 1968" is one of the most complete books on that subject, also treating various perspectives.
Furthermore, Robert Pringle's article "Andropov's Counterintelligence state" in the Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 13, issue 2 from 2000 explains the rationality of the Soviet repression, the role of the KGB and the importance of Yuri Andropov, who was an eye-witness to the Hungarian Revolution, and subsequent KGB chief.
Archie Brown's "The Rise and Fall of Communism" might also be a useful read to get into the Communist mentality.
"The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: Reform, Revolt and Repression, 1953-1963" by multiple authors, edited by Janos Bak, is a very important work on the Hungarian Revolution that also draws on previously classified materials.