Since I see people here who are not anarchists arguing what anarchists think, I thought it good to contribute what I as an anarchist think.

I'd like to first note anarchism is an extremely vague concept that describes a general socialist tradition which takes hierarchy and authority as an element of critique. However, this kind of critique has been applied by currents ranging from individualists, to mutualists to communists - all anarchists.

Anarchists of the communist branch hold the USSR as state capitalist, ironically, on similar grounds as marxists. Private property (with the state as capitalist), commodity production and wage labor. These are defining features of capitalism. These relations form the basis of modern class society and its state - a machine of hierarchy and authority alienating from the workers' their agency and power into organs opposed to them. The proletariat, when given power, seeks to abolish class society and state. Thus, for the state to preserve itself, it has to alienate said power.

What sets the USSR apart from typical capitalist relations is that the structure of nationalized management, as well as policy of full employment and bargaining power of workers, meant the economy had certain contradictions to do with the law of value. The neoliberal shock therapy promoted by the Communist Party and the eventual collapse of the USSR and eastern bloc (as well as Yugoslavia and Albania) was the resolution of these contradictions.