I recently watched the film ‘Storyville Gorbachev Heaven’ filmed late 2019. In it, Gorbachev described himself as still a socialist and in fact still regarded Lenin as a bit of ‘god’ to him. He also made clear his aim was always and his biggest regret not achieving it was preserving the USSR.

This puts the non-sourced or evidenced claim that at some event in Turkey Gorbachev admitted his secret plan all along was to destroy the Soviet Union in even more question.

The comments made by Gorbachev in the film are completely consistent with all of his other speeches and writings since 1985 (i.e. relevant to this claim).

Gorbachev did say he remained pleased he did not resort to any of the methods of some of his predecessors (including Lenin) in dealing with some of his political opponents. (Although he did say part of him wished he could have taken out Yeltsin although how serious he was is difficult to judge.)

Gorbachev was clearly approaching the end of his life and well knew it. If ever there was a time to come clean about “secret plans” or intentions that was it. The interviewer did not counter Gorbachev on his remarks about the USSR with any so-called previous “admission” of any “secret plan.”

I must conclude therefore the claims of any admission or existence of a secret plan by Gorbachev to destroy the Soviet Union is a complete fabrication.

It could be argued that the policies of glasnost and perestroika directly led to the collapse of the Soviet Union (I do not share that view) but that is a completely different argument to that put forward by Peter.