I should put a disclaimer first - I consider myself a socialist (but not a Stalinist, or any kind of sympathizer). The framing you put here demands a correction, but I think this disclaimer is warranted in this correction - the USSR (the elephant in your question) is near impossible to approach, in a brief manner, "apolitically", imo (not that my aim is to soapbox, but, to me, there is a lot at stake in reckoning with Stalinism). Further, the answer here could easily devolve into an exposition on the history of "actually existing Socialism". I won`t do that, I`ll just try to highlight some experiments (with more focus on Russia - and some context surrounding the rise of the Bolsheviks). Finally, there is a lot of debate over "if X was actually socialist". I won`t get into the weeds here, bc that topic gets very political, and technical, beyond the scope of the subreddit. I will instead try to highlight some of the ideological "blinders" relevant to the question, and a simple reference definition: socialism is when worker`s own (and thus control) the means of production. The application and interpretation of this varies a lot, obviously.

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The framing that they were [cynical] smokescreens for fascism/authoritarianism is incorrect. There is, AFAIK, very little scholarship indicating such. One of Stephen Kotkin`s big takeaways in his books (ie Stalin biography and Armageddon Averted) is that even Stalin was a bonafide socialist. It`s a big topic for leftists what went wrong, most arguing it got terribly perverted somehow (a can of worms itself) (Slovenian philosopher Zizek is very interested in this, for example), but I don't think your supposition is well supported. Its a heterodox view, to say the least. I`m willing to bet you are interested in "actually existing" anarchist countries, so I will point to a few such examples throughout from the 20th century (an honorable mention here for the Zapatistas). Ofc, I will miss some, but hopefully it will be a nice guide on issues and examples.

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For precisions sake, I will ocasionally specify "ML" (Marxist-Leninist, and its variants*), rather than the broader term "socialist". MLs believe that socialism (see definition above) is achieved when the workers become the dominant class in society, not the bourgeois (very crudely, the class that owns everything, although not simply this), and this is achieved through a vanguard party of the working class, capable of resisting infilitration and ideological corruption, helping society progress.

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A quick philosophical[?] detour. Here I think Zizek makes two important points pertinent to your claims. First, socialists and fascists believe that the problems of modern society are consequences of very different things. Socialists believe that the problems are a result of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, and fascists believe the problems are a result of "outsiders" (ie Jews) perturbing an ethno-society which would otherwise be harmonious. There are dramatically different consequences that follow, even if those consequences appear similar at first glance. This similarity is often combined into the idea of "totalitarianism" - that fascism and socialism (or at least ML) are actually the same thing. Zizek argues that this concept is an ideologically loaded term, the necessary bogeyman of liberal ideology. As a consequence, anyone arguing in favor of any leftist ideals can be politically neutered, by saying "yes yes, but it leads to totalitarianism". If you bite the bullet of "totalitarianism", and read Lenin (a radical democrat in his writing), then the connection becomes irresistable (for a quick intro, you can see the movie "Pervert`s Guide to Ideology" (its on Web Archive), or his book "Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism").

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The point here that Zizek is making is not that "Stalinism wasn`t actually that bad", that "Stalinism was real socialism", or that "Stalinism wasn`t real socialism", or even that "Stalinism was not totalitarianism" (in a more general sense of "totalitarianism" we know today). Two points he wants us to receive (besides ML and fascism being very different): that the Soviet Union was an authentic, yet terribly tragic, experiment in socialism, and if we don`t want that tragedy to repeat, we should take the USSR seriously as a "socialist experiment gone wrong", and not write it off as "something we (real socialists) couldn`t possibly do". The second point is that we must be wary of the ideological context of the concepts we use (ie "totalitarianism"). For example - to turn the tables - a common ML trope is that fascism and liberalism are in fact the same thing ("scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds"). Likewise, fascists argue liberals and socialists are about the same - that liberals open the door for communists (at worst, are "Pinko" sympathizers), and so, what`s the difference? So Zizek isn`t a principled enemy of liberalism here - he has had some questionable positions, but he doesn`t want a new Stalinism (despite his detractors) - he wants us to learn what went wrong, so it doesn`t happen again (crudely put, that the Bolsheviks believed too much in historical determinism and inevitability, with an ends-justify-the-means obsession, of the communist end state).

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Beyond this ideological claim, are there historical details as to what went wrong in ML? Here we get into the dizzying contradictions of the Stalinist Era, and backwards to the Revolution. First, the Bolsheviks (Stalin included) were true-believers - and this was not an unpopular view in the contemporaneous USSR. As Kotkin (a liberal who could never be considered a socialist by a long-shot) opens "Magnetic Mountain", 'Stalinism' was contemporaneously, internally, viewed by the people as a progressive force of development. Especially amidst the worldwide misery of the Great Depression, the Soviet Union was generally experienced as a tenacious, albeit visceral, expression of progress (if you`re in America, consider the aura around the construction of the Hoover Dam, or the Panama Canal, as smaller examples of this attitude). Ofc, many suffered - but still, it wasn`t "unpopular". It seemed implausible, unprecedented, bold, and succeeding. Important to note given this, the Soviet Union was not experienced as a "1984" nightmare (in the purest Orwellian sense). But ofc, it did go very wrong - gulags, the Holodomor, the Show Trials, the Purges, we are all familiar with the ugly side (of course, there are some misconceptions, but that is besides the point here). Adamczak`s recent book "Yesterday`s Tomorrow" is a sober, socialist retrospect on many such tragedies, if you are interested. What are the historical origins of this? One thing Fitzpatrick points to is the Civil War.

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There is a strong tendency to point to Lenin`s vanguardism as the origin of the authoritarianism of ML states. Yet Fitzpatrick makes a counterpoint in "The Russian Revolution". The Bolsheviks, which were a fairly small, core group before the Civil War, ballooned to an army of 5 million by the end. The Civil War was no laughing matter, it was horrific, demanding emergency policies like "war communism". Yet only 1/10 were actually fighters: most were logistics and administration, compensating for the collapsed civil society of the Russian Empire. In effect, a ML army (not simply a ML party) became the skeleton of a very new thing: a socialist experiment. And this skeleton, due to the wartime demands, had the infrastructure of state monopolies (ie grain requisitioning). The "totalitarianism" then is arguably baked into the necessities of such a transformative, brutal civil war. Zizek, as explicated above, would focus more on the obsession with Historical Necessity as the core kernel of the perversion of the Russian Revolution. I think both perspectives are useful to have in mind - and both critiques contain necessary lessons for future socialists.

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My point here is that the Bolsheviks were not simply cynical authoritarians seeking power in any way, using socialism as a "smokescreen". This is a comically bad assessment of the Russian radical tradition which had existed for about 60 years by that point (see Hobsbawm, "Age of Capital" and "Age of Empire"), and it ignores their popularity. These guys were dead serious about socialism and democracy, but the problem was, well, how to get the thing. The Bolsheviks were true believers, and they made it very far. The "vanguardism" of Lenin was borne in an environment when you couldn`t simply meet and talk about socialism, as you would be arrested - you needed a nucleus of trusted allies, an unbreakable kernel of revolutionary force. MLs may have tried to generalize vanguardism to any context afterwards, but today we don`t need to be as naive. The question the Bolsheviks (and many of their successors) raise isn`t "were Bolsheviks socialist", but "if a socialist experiment is borne from terrible civil war, can authoritarianism be avoided?" And in addition, "what other means are there to achieve a just society?" and "Is an alternative to terrible civil war possible, or will a White Army always react?" It`s extremely tempting, as a socialist, to write the Bolsheviks, the Maoists, the MPLM, the Derg, and so on, off as "not really socialists" (they were fascist!), but this is frankly absurd. More dangerously, any such deniers presumably won`t have learned any lessons from how these groups failed. To point to the Kronstadt Strike/Rebellion and say "look, the Bolsheviks weren`t socialist" is to lose an enormous treasure trove of tragic lessons... for what?

Edit: this temptation is what Zizek argues is the key for liberal ideologies neutering of leftism. It comes from this misunderstanding of fascism and socialism. I point this out bc this mess of politics and history is tangled up together.