>>807109Glasnost was moronic (what if we showed all the mid-tier elites just how much better off the average western civil servant was, then let them whine about it openly?) and Perestroika was the right idea in high-concept ("economic reform") but asinine in practice, rooted as it was in reforming an economy none of the reformers actually understood based on principles none of them had thought through.
It is not a question of liberalising "softer" or "harder", Gorbachev's problem is not that his liberalisation was "soft", it is that it was utterly stupid. It broke down the firewall between beznal ("non-cash" for accounting purposes between state enterprises) and nal (actual circulating money people use to buy goods and services) leading to a situation where the state was basically printing the money for its own looting, leading to hyperinflation and shortages and originating basically every negative stock-image of the Soviet economy.
This is not a half-way point between the old Soviet economy and Dengism, this is a completely different path towards doom.
That said: No Socialist leader has sold out harder to the west than Gorbachev. He handed over the entirety of eastern Europe (by necessity, the USSR was too broke to do otherwise!) while China has never had to renounce its claim to Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, the Paracel Islands…