For the West he was a hero, for the Russians he was a disaster https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Russia/Death_rate/ . I don't blame Gorbachev for this. Just as in the case of Nikolai II Russian totalitarian state and lack of checks and balances washed out an inept person to rule the country.
The communist system is responsible for that, not Gorbachev. Centralized gov't controlled economies create corruption which results in ultimate economic collapse.
I partially wanted to express it with "totalitarian state and lack of checks and balances". However, I slightly disagree. Being an authoritarian ruler, Gorbachev had lots of power. It is proven by the fact that his reforms were radical and unsuccessful, and many of the problems that the Soviet union faced during its demise were exacerbated by them. Of course, the Soviet Union was to suffer some losses but they could have been milder. But may be you are 100% correct. I don't feel knowledgeable enough on the topic of late Soviet union to argue.
"Checks and balances" mean nothing unless you specify who's checking who. System where the military keeps a check on the president, or the king keeps a check on parliament, aren't really much better than the "checker" being in charge all the time. And systems based on mutual checking tend to just reel from one constitutional crisis to another.
The quality of implementation definitely matters, agreed. However, the Soviet states by and large didn't even have a shitty form in place, the party leader was an 'elected' dictator.
