[source (in Russian) - https://www.sovsekretno.ru/articles/banda-chetyryekh-i-gorbachyev/]; OFC it is much more complex than “just Gorbachev”, and what follows is my - too quick - edit of google translate [sorry but I’m too busy today to do it manually]:
THE GANG OF FOUR AND GORBACHEV
”Gorbachev was a bark beetle for our Motherland” says Valentin Falin, former secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
April 3, 2016 Valentin Falin turns 90 years old. Valentin Mikhailovich knows almost all the secrets of the international and domestic policy of the USSR. He was the Ambassador of the USSR to the FRG for seven years (from 1971 to 1978). Then he worked for four years as First Deputy Head of the International Information Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1982, he fell into disgrace - he was a political observer for Izvestia and headed the news agency APN. In the midst of perestroika, he worked as head of the international department of the Central Committee of the CPSU and secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1989-1991)
Falin is harsh in his assessments, and the editors of Top Secret do not agree with some of his opinions and conclusions. But these are the memories of a man who was a participant in many key events in the history of our country. “If we do not learn from the tragic experience of our history, for which we paid a colossal price, then we will not save today’s Russia,” says Valentin Falin, former secretary of the CPSU Central Committee for international affairs and a close assistant to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.
–Valentin Mikhailovich, a quarter of a century has already passed since the collapse of the USSR. In public opinion - “Gorbachev is to blame for everything.” But is the last General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the first and last President of the USSR to blame for everything? Or would another person in the place of Mikhail Sergeyevich lead the USSR to the same result?
–Gorbachev was brought to power in the USSR as a result of a deal at the very top in our country. This deal was supposed to allow each of the contenders for a voice in the leadership of the country to continue to play its role in the politics of the USSR. Why was Leonid Brezhnev brought to power in 1964? Because Leonid Ilyich was a man incapable of confrontation[!]. In 1964, a triumvirate was formed, which included Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Podgorny, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and Kosygin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. All of them had equal rights. I have been present on several occasions when one of the people I named objected to some important political issue, and then this issue was hung in the air. Sometimes one of the members of the triumvirate was not in the Kremlin or even in Moscow during the discussion of some important decisions, and then the solution of strategically important issues for the country simply got delayed for an indefinite time. This whole situation led to the fact that in June 1977 Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny was “thrown out” of the triumvirate, dismissing him from all posts and leaving him to slowly die as a pensioner. Even earlier, in 1976, Alexei Nikolaevich Kosygin had a heart attack. And around Brezhnev all this time sycophants were spinning, creating a new cult of personality in the country. From a good-natured and ingenuous person, an icon was made, decorated with rows of shiny orders.
I will say that Leonid Ilyich did not really like the increased attention to himself. For example, when they began to make a second Stalingrad out of the battle on Malaya Zemlya, Leonid Ilyich was indignant. When we visited the Malaya Zemlya museum in 1968, Leonid Ilyich told me that he did not want to be thought that the fate of the Second World War was being decided on this patch of land. He was afraid that they would make another Soviet idol out of him. So his intuition did not fail him. Towards the end of his life, when Brezhnev became completely ill, he twice raised the issue with the Politburo to be dismissed from office. And twice his request was denied. Brezhnev was a screen behind which one could do any deeds, and not do what the USSR really needed...[end of part one - continuing in comments below]
[...part two]:
Ordinary members of the Central Committee spoke among themselves: it is not Brezhnev who rules in the USSR, but our home-grown “gang of four.” This “gang” included: Chairman of the KGB of the USSR Yuri Andropov, Minister of Defense of the USSR Dmitry Ustinov, the main ideologist of the CPSU Mikhail Suslov and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Andrei Gromyko. Calling these people the “gang of four,” colleagues were right. These four pilfered all the power in our country. It was then, in essence, that the decline and agony of the Soviet Union began.
–You personally worked in Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko’s department then. Why do you think that the activities of the then head of the Soviet Foreign Ministry did not meet the important urgent needs of the USSR and the socialist bloc? As far as we remember, it was for his upholding of socialist interests that Gromyko received the nickname Mister No from the Americans.
–In the 1970s, the Americans forced the leadership of the FRG to place Pershing missile systems on its territory as a weapon for the first missile strike against the “Soviet threat”. If deployed, the Pershings would have been aimed directly at the GDR, which is related to the West Germans. German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who did not want the death of his compatriots and generally intended to prevent a catastrophe, offered the Soviet Union the following solution to this problem. At that time, our SS-4 and SS-5 class missiles were deployed in the Soviet groups of forces stationed in Eastern Europe. Schmidt suggested that Moscow should replace these missiles with newer Pioneer-class (aka SS-20) systems, on the condition that Pioneers would not have more warheads than previous missile systems. Schmidt, as the Federal Chancellor of the FRG, will put pressure on Washington, and then the Americans will not dare to deploy “Pershings”. Schmidt’s version was quite acceptable. In order to re-equip the missile arsenal in our groups of troops abroad, we did not need to once again rumble weapons all over Europe. After all, on the “SS-4” and “SS-5” there was a monoblock charge, and on the “pioneers” - a three-block charge. US missile manipulation in Germany posed a real threat to Europe, and the USSR had to prevent this threat.
I reported to Gromyko about American plans in the FRG and outlined Schmidt’s proposals on this matter. Andrei Andreevich, after listening to me, said something like “the old swindler Schmidt offers Moscow to exchange Soviet missiles for air through Falin.” “When the Americans place these Pershings in Germany, then we will talk!” - finished Gromyko. I replied: “When they place it, it will be too late.” Gromyko: “The word “late” does not exist in politics!”
Schmidt made his last attempt to convince Moscow when he flew from China to Bonn via Moscow. He tried to contact the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Kosygin, who did not object to the plan of the German Chancellor regarding the “pioneers”. But instead of Kosygin, Schmidt was met by the stubborn Gromyko, and he flew away. After all, broken by a heart attack, the sick Kosygin by that time had already been actually removed from politics and was living out the last years of his life.
As a result, the Americans placed Pershings in the FRG, the balance of power in Europe tilted towards NATO, the strategic moment was lost, and our country became involved in a disastrous arms race, which then “ate” all our foreign exchange reserves and led the economy of our country to a crisis. The collapse of the USSR was a consequence of the Soviet economic crisis.
After all, under the “Pershings” in Germany, the Americans launched 12 military programs. We responded by launching our programs. In 1981, a new program was adopted for the European NATO countries, and for the US armed forces, the Army 2000 program. The USSR began to choke. Nikolai Ogarkov, Chief of the General Staff of the USSR Ministry of Defense, reported to the Politburo that the Soviet army was unable to resist this program. They answered him: if Ogarkov is such an expert on Western military affairs, then let him go to command the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, and the one who is able to fulfill the task set by the Party and the government will come to the General Staff. State Planning Committee Chairman Nikolai Baibakov reported to the Politburo that the country’s economy was unable to overcome the military confrontation with the Americans. In response, he heard: “Nikolai Konstantinovich, retire. In your place, someone will come who will do what he is ordered."
By the end of Brezhnev’s rule, reserves designed to boost the Soviet economy and improve social policy in the USSR were reduced by almost fifty percent. A crisis began, which by the mid-1980s had grown to such an extent that our country was on the verge of an abyss. The reason for this is the words of Andrei Gromyko that “it is never too late in politics.”
–If I may, let’s go directly to Mikhail Gorbachev, his team, perestroika and subsequent events.
-The main problem of Gorbachev is the absence of a human character in a person. It so happened that he became the head of the Soviet state, exactly at that difficult time. The time when in the USSR the gap between word and deed had already reached such a state that the party and the government could no longer ignore the most elementary demands and aspirations of the Soviet people.
At the same time, on the other side of the world, William Casey sat in the chair of CIA chief. Casey proposed to Reagan to create a sharp drop in hydrocarbon prices on the world market. At the behest of Reagan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates created an oversupply of oil trading, and the price of a barrel of oil fell from $25-$26 to $8. And with it the flow of petrodollars, with which our country paid,first of all, for the import of consumer goods (40% of consumer goods) and - much more than that - medicines that we bought abroad in the countries of the socialist community. The CMEA was closed, everyone began living from paycheck to paycheck. What a dumb decision! When I headed the international department of the Central Committee, I tried to object, to say that it was impossible to act like that. It was necessary, first, to start a policy of sufficiency in the field of military armaments. Engaging in the arms race, responding to the challenge of the United States, we acted not so much against the United States as against our own country. We served the American strategy of bringing the USSR to death.
Gorbachev came to power without any personal program. His thesis was the principle of Napoleon: let’s get into the fight, and then we’ll see. After Mikhail Sergeevich lost himself in politics, he tried at all costs to maintain his reputation, or at least the appearance of this reputation. He was ready to pay for it, like a Shakespearean hero, with the difference that in the end he gave the whole kingdom for a horse. Gorbachev was a bark beetle for our Motherland. He acted according to the principle of Clausewitz: Russia can only be defeated from within. So he won, gnawed at the roots, and the tree withered and died. He was assisted in this by Eduard Shevardnadze, Alexander Yakovlev and other personalities attached to them.
–Tell us about Alexander Yakovlev. He was the “foreman of perestroika”, and under Yeltsin he became the main ideologist of Russian democracy. [...end of part two]