From his perspective Ronald Reagan was the best thing that ever happened to him ~ an American President who would speak out on behalf of "reform" ~ the kind he had in mind, or another type ~ it really didn't matter.
Although Gorbachev is probably not going to go down in history as the greatest benefactor the Russian people and the Captive Nations ever had, he will be recalled as the man who facilitated Ronald Reagan in his campaign to end the Cold War and bring democracy to the East.
During one of the Reagan retrospective shows on one of the cable channels, they replayed part of a debate-style event with some historians, including Condi Rice, when she was still provost at Stanford.
Someone was trying to say that the Soviet Union would have collapsed on its own, but Condi disagreed. Her point was, as she stated "without Reagan, Gorbachev never comes to power".
In other words, without Reagan standing tall against communism and exposing it and the Soviet Union as the "evil empire", someone like Gorbachev never even gets the chance.
Gobachev was appointed specifically to be the USSR answer to RWR. He existed, he got his job BECAUSE of Reagan.
He was supposed to be the point man of the USSR charm offensive.
Gorby came on the scene as someone who wanted to reform it in order to keep from being hopelessly left behind by the American econonmy so that th Soviet military program could no longer keep up. They had passed the point of diminishing returns and the politburo realized they were out of answers. They turned to the relatively young man and said make the economy work. Gorbachev was just as ruthless a communist as were the rest. Otherwise he would not have been in a position to be given the job. He tried and failed to institute freemarket reforms to bring in more money to be able to keep up militarily. He did not know how to do it. He failed. He determined to not go down with the ship.
The Chicoms learned some things from Gorbachev and have had a better run. They also benefit from a culture that will not challenge the empire. They will fail. Their economy will hit a ceiling beyond which it cannot rise without adopting Western free market systems. That means the business class must learn to do business as if it has a Judaeo roots.