Otherwise hard to prove a negative, how many ops were deterred by presence of USSR conventional forces in country, or by threat of USSR intervening?
With various intervention forces it's really more of a matter of quality rather than quantity. As a superpower with global ambition Soviets needed those. But they were only a small part of Soviet conventional forces. In a focused arms spending scenario these forces might be even expanded.
The exception would be the occupation forces in Eastern Europe where quantity would be also needed. There it's more important to have enough manpower, tanks and APC's to perform an intervention when necessary. Whether the tanks in question would be T-62's or T-80's the crushed demonstrators would not care.