[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]