ninebucks
Banned
Tough call, but would Gorbachev concentrate on economy 1st, democratic reforms with full supermarket shelves and half-working economy could make USSR drift toward the goal described in OP. In other words, pulling Deng in USSR. And mixed-economy USSR would need to democratize (as opposed to today's China), as it did not have population willing to work for bowl of rice the way a lot of Chinese do even today.
I disagree, economic reform, as it happened in OTL, sold the USSR out. State resources were sold for a pittance to people who didn't care about anything but their own wealth and corrupt officials turned their back en masse while billions of dollars of state-owned equipment were literally stolen. While I won't make the outrageous claim that the late-USSR was more democratic than the early-RF, I would claim that the people were disempowered when what was essentially their property was given away without a single thought being given to their interests.
Top-down economic reform without comprehensive political reform inevitably creates a situation where politicians are more beholden to amoral businessmen and oligarchs than their own populations. China is also facing this problem and, I'd argue, their current 'Harmonious Society' policy is doomed to eventual failure, and that their best bet would be to resocialise a good deal of their economy, (at the risk of sounding like some kind of neo-Maoist, the PRC's economy is currently less socialised than the USA's by a huge factor, and that will need remedying).