Of course it comes down to material conditions and timing, that's just validating communist theory about the development of socialism. If anarchist projects are always under the wrong material conditions then maybe anarchism is just not what comes after capitalism. But shit did not just line up right for ML projects, the soviet union was invaded by multiple imperial powers immediately after its inception, and not long after was decimated by Nazi Germany, it's a cop-out to claim ML's are just lucky. Calling those anarchist projects 'smaller scale' is a bit of an understatement, none of these projects have been able to defend themselves against imperialism.