Imperial Russia was a very repressive place. They used to send people around the world to take out dissidents in exile and as for freedom of the press, speech or religion, nyet!
No, they are not quite the USSR. The USSR would have cracked down on crime. Of course what they considered crime was subject to being what most places would consider virtues. Like being able to grow enough to eat and a bit to sell at the market.
Since Russia can currently feed it's self they are not back to USSR levels.
“The USSR would have cracked down on crime.”
I don’t think so. Read Solzhenitsyn and the rest. Stalin’s Soviet Union had a huge crime problem and criminal underground.