I very much doubt that anyone does, do they? It is generally accepted, I would have thought, that the true socialist phase in Russia lasted, what, two or three years at most?

The big and deadly serious question about Marxism, IMHO, is whether that collapse into a new type of tyranny is inevitable or whether it is just awkward coincidence that, every time it has been tried so far, a couple of years is the most you get before it all turns brutally sour. Do 'the inexorable processes of history' move on to the next 'inevitable' phase of historical development into tyranny (for those who did all the 'struggling' and 'heroic sacrificing', rather a short-lived prize really). Or is it just that the conditions weren't quite right this time. But next time.....it'll be different. One more big push and we will be there and history will at last come to a benevolent stop.  

For those of us who like to think of ourselves as socialists but not Marxists it's the cruel double illusion of inevitability and sustainability, contrary to all the evidence, after just one more revolutionary struggle......that sticks in the craw.

Um, I should perhaps just add that I don't blame either Thomas Ades or Joyce Hatto for any of this.