What Gorbachev didn't succeed at, the Spanish King Juan Carlos did in his own country. We don't know if he meant he left a dictatorship or smooth passage to democracy. Juan Carlos succeeded with a smooth and acrobatic passage to total democracy and he also had to face an unsuccessful putsch. Juan Carlos had an easier task than Gorbachev because Franco left a prosperous Spain and a much smaller, on a human scale, country. Therefore, he depended less on foreign help.
Late help is always more expensive and less efficient.
Just as a drowning man will grasp at a straw, so some Russians support demagogues who have nothing to offer except empty slogans and a boot in the snout as in the good old days. Yeltsin's defeat would mean that those two collaborating groups would end by jumping at each other's throats with unknown consequences for Russia and its neighbours.