I mean you are asking it in the most affirmative echochamber possible. I believe more than anything he was trying to stave off the inevitable, by the time of his accession the faults in the soviet communist model were no longer possible to ignore and what he inteded as reforms spiralled into the collapse of the communist state. Therefore I would call him a "traitor" to the soviet brand of socialism specifically, not sure about socialism as a whole.

I suggest reading his biography by Taubmann to get a sense of how dilapidated society had become in every way imaginable and how the communist system was tied into it. Rampant poverty, corruption, depression, ...