[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]
[...final(third) part]
-I found out that Yakovlev was an USA asset back in 1961. I was told about this by a friend of mine, who was then working in the KGB of the USSR. For almost 10 years, Alexander Nikolayevich worked as the USSR ambassador to Canada. He was not an American spy in the usual sense of the word. By the time Gorbachev became general secretary, Yakovlev was one of the most important agents of American influence in the USSR. I will note for the sake of truth, he was a very gifted and intelligent person, two orders of magnitude smarter and more talented than Gorbachev. Yakovlev’s masters across the ocean were also no fools, and had a good idea of what was going on in the political elite of the USSR.
The chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, having collected compromising materials on Yakovlev, came with them to Yakovlev’s office. Yakovlev answered all the questions of Vladimir Aleksandrovich with silence, and Kryuchkov then went to report to Gorbachev. Mikhail Sergeevich chewed his lips and came up with a summary of astonishing profundity. Say, who does not have the sins of youth? Yakovlev is a useful person for perestroika, so the country needs him and he needs to be allowed into big politics. And they let him in. Like a goat straight into the garden!
Yakovlev’s ascent began not along the political line, but along the line of foreign economic relations. This began after information about his tricks with the Americans reached Yuri Andropov, and he was returned from Ottawa to Moscow with an order to “keep an eye on him and not let him into the Central Committee of the CPSU.”
In 1982, Nikolai Nikolaevich Inozemtsev, director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), died. It was decided to put Yakovlev in the chair of the late Inozemtsev. Let him sit at IMEMO, do scientific work, and we will follow him. Andropov died in 1984, and everyone was not up to Yakovlev. When Gorbachev was still in Chernenko’s team, Yakovlev made a very strong impression on him. After all, the director of IMEMO was smart and charming and could suggest a lot of useful ideas and solutions. And Gorbachev was not distinguished by a special mind, but he was very receptive to everything new, even too much.
In the summer of 1985, a few months after Chernenko’s death and his accession to the throne, Gorbachev made Yakovlev Secretary of the Central Committee for Ideology. He allowed an foreign agent straight into the Central Committee, furthermore to the seat of the main ideologist of the country!
In 1989, at the Second Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR, Yakovlev made a report on the tragic consequences for Europe as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Thanks to his report, the USSR was imposed a complex of a country that should pay everyone for everything and repent before the whole world, only for the fact of it’s very existence. Shortly after this report, pogroms of Russians began in the Baltic republics, in Moldova and in Western Ukraine. In 1988, blood was already shed in Sumgayit. Some time later, the entire Soviet Transcaucasus plunged into an atmosphere of mutual genocide. Then the North Caucasus…Thank you so much, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. Today it is known that on the eve of the collapse of the USSR, he actively traveled to all the union republics and fomented extremist sentiments there. On the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, he traveled to the GDR and the FRG.
–What was the situation in our country when the question of German unification was being decided? Did Gorbachev rightfully receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990?
–An economic and then a social crisis erupted in the USSR. The country was threatened with famine and a major social explosion. But public opinion was already under control, I would even say under the hood of Western ideology. You remember how during the perestroika period the wind was blowing over empty shelves in our stores, while trains with fish, meat, butter, and vegetables stood near Moscow? But they were never unloaded, and everything that was there rotted into waste. The labor of thousands of Soviet people, by the will of the Soviet leadership, turned into waste. But the leaders at that moment were discussing another issue: the establishment of the post of President of the USSR. I asked Gorbachev a direct question: what will change in our country after the establishment of the presidency? Will there be products in stores? Wouldn’t it be better to attend to issues of food supply, social and youth policy, issues of national outskirts? Gorbachev replied: “I will give instructions on all questions. Food will definitely appear"
But nothing has changed. Some progress with products appeared after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Then I found out that it was not a coincidence! On the eve of the famous negotiations in Arkhyz about the future of Germany, Gorbachev, through his assistant Chernyaev, contacted Helmut Kohl and began to cry: “I have nothing to feed the people, give three or four billion Deutschmarks, and in return you will receive everything you need in Arkhyz.” In this short sentence is the very essence of Gorbachev! He took loans from the West and was ready to pay for them not only with the integrity of the community of socialist countries, but also with the existence of his own country.
In addition to the negotiations between Gorbachev and Kolya in Arkhyz, in December 1989 [a month after the fall of Berlin Wall] the Soviet leader met with French President Mitterrand in Kyiv. Mitterand invited Gorbachev to fly to Berlin together to support Honecker[then already an ex-leader of GDR]. Gorbachev’s reaction: “If you want to fly, fly! And I won’t go." I also remember how Thatcher suggested to Gorbachev not to resolve the issue with Germany exclusively personally, but to create a commission on this matter, which would include England, France and the USSR. Thatcher feared that as a result of the unification in the Gorbachev style, the western part of the country would swallow the eastern part, and instead of a single German nation, an “ossi-wessy” conflict would result. Gorbachev, in my presence, reacted to the proposal of the Iron Lady in this way: “I don’t want to wash their dirty laundry for the British and French, but I will support the unification of Germany.” This is how Moscow surrendered the GDR, and Honecker, and all the East Germans.
I know for sure that at the talks in Arkhyz, Helmut Kohl asked Gorbachev if Moscow intended to somehow help Erich Honecker, the SED and the entire socialist elite of the GDR. Kohl clearly thought that Moscow intended to help its German Genosses. But Gorbachev answered him: “These questions are your internal affair, and you know better how to deal with whom.”
But Gorbachev’s decision to “surrender” the GDR was not really his own. It was suggested to him in June 1989 by George W. Bush, when the Gorbachevs were in Washington. On the eve of this historical “hint”, the first lady of the United States, Barbara Bush, “just in case”, “treated” Raisa Maksimovna. These women worked in a well-coordinated tandem on the eve of the collapse of the USSR. In order for Gorbachev to commit another betrayal, one thing was needed: for “dear Barbara” and Raisa Maksimovna to pump up the sick ambitions of Mikhail Sergeyevich, and he - from the consciousness of his own historical importance -swelled like a soap bubble. In such a bloated state, he received his Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. It was both a payment for the betrayal of the socialist bloc, and an advance payment for the already planned and agreed upon collapse of the USSR.
Did Gorbachev rightfully receive the Nobel Prize? Maybe yes. By the same right, Judas received from Caiaphas his 30 pieces of silver.