Aside from espionage, which is a given, did the CIA have leaders working on the inside from the USSR to sabotage and lead to its downfall?
In the U.S., we're taught in our history classes that the USSR fell apart because it had run out of money, the economy was in tatters, and the people wanted more economic and personal freedom. Recently I was speaking with my wife and her family from Russia who lived through the downfall of the USSR and they described the American version of the story as "propaganda". Apparently, life was pretty good in the Soviet Union during the late 80's and 90's, there were shortages here and there but nothing like what was portrayed in American media. They were taught in school that the U.S. through the CIA and Gorbachev (who my wife and her family despise) worked to intentionally break apart the USSR and blame it on the failure of the Marxist-Leninist way of life.
So my question is, how much influence did the CIA have in this regard to break apart the USSR, and why did the U.S. portray the way of life in the Soviet Union during this time period as being so poor? I'm inclined to believe my wife's family since they lived through it, but it's completely opposite to everything I've heard in the U.S., so I'm wondering why there is such a discrepancy between the Russian and American sides of the story.
Zilch. The CIA and the US government in general had a limited understanding of what was happening in the USSR, and US policy under George H.W. Bush strongly favored Gorbachev and a continuation of the Soviet state (Bush much preferred Gorbachev to Yeltsin, and even spoke to the Ukrainian parliament in his (in)famous "Chicken Kiev" speech on August 1, 1991 warning them against independence).
A further discussion of what the US government knew and didn't know about the Soviet dissolution can be found here:
With much respect to your wife and her family, live was not that great economically speaking in the USSR in the late 1980s-early 1990s. This wasn't exactly the result of the planned economy per se, nor was it the result of CIA sabotage, but because piecemeal economic reforms under Gorbachev had destablized the command economy while not creating a market economy either. From 1989 or so on, there were increasing shortages of goods as supply chains broke down, a general economic downturn, and massive increases in inflation.
If you'd like some further information, I wrote a short rundown as to Why did the Soviet Union collapse?, and a longer discussion as to Mikhail Gorbachev is viewed as a hero by the majority of the world, however a significant amount of Russians dispise him. Can I get a thorough explanation of why?.
A final note on Gorbachev - a lot of his reform efforts ultimately caused the dissolution of the Soviet Union, politically and economically. But in his semi-defense this was in large part because he released forces, such as nationalism and republican sovereignty movements, that he did not anticipate, could not control, and opposed. The dissolution through his reforms was unintentional - his goal was to restructure socialism in order to strengthen it (along roughly lines similar to Alexander Dubček's "Socialism with a human face"). It didn't work out that way.