Yes, ignore Marx, there is absolutely nothing to be learned from him. Just solve the work piling prisoners dilemma and you get the "utopia" part of communism (fair involvement of workers) for free.
Marx only provided the critique of capitalism and said that historical materialism (the analysis of history as being contingent on material conditions, ie resource allocation) led him to believe capitalism would inevitably collapse into socialism and then communism through the proletariat winning class conflict. All the USSR shit is mostly Lenin, AFAIK.
Not even Lenin. Lenin ran the USSR as a mixed economy with heavy market involvement. It's Stalin that really defined the dysfunction of the later USSR.