As an anarchist, how it went for me:

Read history. Have intimate relationships with at least two tankies (all my relationships end badly, so its a sure way to build a grudge).

Marx was cool though (sometimes), and I've got some ml comrades who are doing pretty much the right thing, and most importantly: I'd rather be murdered by my hot problematic ex in a few years than some shitty nazi tomorrow. So if there are firing squads for the anarchists, my last wish is that one of my exes do mine, please.

If I get my way, you guys can run the trains.

If none of this makes sense, read some less myopic history. The USSR was unquestionably better than the czarist regime, by a lot, and it was the worst most reactionary group of communists kind of giving communism a bad name by being generally shitty about being bare minimum decent¹. Also the bolsheviks killing all the other communists, not just the anarchists. Yes they moved Russia, technologically, farther in their short life than basically any civilization in history, but they did it by shitting on the core ideas of communism for some peripheral crap Marx said was 'probably a thing you need sometjing like to get there, I think'. There's an opportunity cost thing, and I'll give them more understanding, but they do not get a full pass for bad behavior just because they were communist. What's the incident where the term 'tankie' was born? Remember that one?

Yes they were better than the other world powers, but by as little as they could get away with while still calling themselves communist, like they relished the misery, fetishized the sacrifices, and frequently missed the god damn point. They ruled for a people they weren't willing to trust or like, a lesson robespierre had already fucking taught us, and that poisoned the idea of communism, or at least the word, for a lot of people. Thats why I still have to call myself an anarchist instead of an anarcho-communist if I want to turn libs.

¹which, yes, set the entire rest of the world against them. They had a few teeeensy difficulties. They still used it as a license to be otherwise just as awful as everyone else, and handled their problems in utterly deplorable ways.

An interesting connection that I've observed over and over again to the point that it's practically a law in my head, is how many of these newly minted anticommunist "anarchists" also end up being anti-black or more accurately anti-black radical politics, the same phenomenon emerges subtly among many academic western Marxians and more obviously with the whole maga"communist" conservative subculture

Historically, anti-communism and anti-blackness have been inseparable and the anxiety is obvious, westerners fear communism will lead to minorities escaping their subordinate positions and inflicting some nebulous horror upon them, this anxiety is so baked into American consciousness that you had Trump accuse Kamala Harris (neoliberal par excellence) of being a communist, anyone with sense understood that as being an expression of both anticommunism and more prominently anti-blackness

My theory (which is largely lifted from Professor Gerald Horn) is that anti-communism in the west is directly proportional with anti-blackness and explains the savage irrational anti-left hatred that you observe among so many newly minted so-called radicals, the state and it's various intelligence orgs supply the mental and intellectual architecture of anticommunism while anti-blackness supplies the emotional fuel that sustains that state effort

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion

None of the Kronstadt rebellion's demands were met.[205] The Bolsheviks did not restore freedom of speech and assembly. They did not release socialist and anarchist political prisoners. Rival left-wing groups were suppressed rather than brought into coalition governance. The Bolsheviks did not adopt worker council autonomy ("free soviets") and did not entertain direct, democratic soldier election of military officials. Old directors and specialists continued to run the factories instead of the workers. State farms remained in place. Wage labor remained unchanged.[206] Avrich described the aftermath as such: "As in all failed revolts in authoritarian regimes, the rebels realized the opposite of their aims: harsher dictatorship, less popular self-government."[207]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Disillusionment_in_Russia

Goldman described the rebellion as the "final wrench. I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and disintegrating everything".[1]

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2021/10/15/cointelpro-fbi-anarchism-disrupt-left/

anarchists have a rich oral tradition that stretches back thousands of years