The first time I visited Krasnoyarsk in October 1989, in the dying days of the Soviet Union, it was a shabby, grey, provincial city, with empty shops, broken pavements and Communist slogans on the flat apartment roofs.
Until then, Krasnoyarsk had been a "closed" city because of its secret military factories and prison camps, but as the old system broke down I became the first Western journalist allowed to visit without supervision. I have returned to stay with the same family a couple of times since then and recently went back for a short visit. I found that the riverside Siberian city of one million people, founded by Russian traders in 1628, had undergone an astonishing transformation in the past few years, emerging from its Soviet past to adopt European-style ways.
Cheerful shops
The once-crumbling 19th-century buildings on the main street, the Avenue of Peace, have been renovated and painted in light pastel shades of blue, yellow and brown. Dingy stores have been replaced with bright, cheerful shops and high-class restaurants with names such as "Picasso". People laugh out loud on the street now. Before, they hurried about their business in silence, or "in irritation", as the popular Siberian author, Viktor Astafiev, who died last December, told me on my first visit.
Businessmen shouting into mobile phones and kids wearing digital head-sets manoeuvre round outdoor cafes on Japanese bicycles and American roller-blades.
In Krasnoyarsk today "vsyo yest" - there is everything. There are pastry shops, butchers, music stores, perfumeries, supermarkets and mini-malls. Fashion shops advertise haute couture for "madam". Toyotas and Volkswagens compete for space with Russian Ladas. Spiderman is showing in the new three-screen cinema. You still need cash to buy most things, even a ticket from the regional airline, Krasair, but there are ATMs which accept Irish bank cards.
Smooth new pavements have been laid where once there was mud and cracked concrete. Businessmen have installed rubbish bins outside their premises and helped pay for dozens of ornamental fountains in return for tax incentives from Mayor Petr Pimashkov. Portacabin toilets have been placed along the embankment of the mighty Yeneisey River for strollers (an unheard of luxury!). Billboards say, "Keep Krasnoyarsk beautiful". Everywhere red brick is replacing poor-quality concrete as new walls and buildings go up. The grim prison barracks near where I stayed is being faced with brick as a cosmetic exercise.
Luxury homes
A former police major with whom I am friendly, and who now has a business importing fruit and vegetables, took me to see his almost complete red-brick mansion on the hills outside town. It would fetch a million euro in any Dublin suburb. Several new luxury homes - the Russians call them "cottages" - line the roads here of what will soon be a fashionable quarter.
He told me also of the crime which has worsened in the city since the fall of the Soviet Union. The owner of a riverside casino was shot dead not long ago as he walked to his car. While I was there, the lawyer for a powerful businessman called Vilor Struganov (nicknamed "Strobe-light" because of his nervous tic) was bludgeoned to death outside his home. Heroin and other drugs are becoming prevalent, especially among the grim apartment blocks of the industrial east bank, and corruption is still a big problem. But the days when the first "co-operative" businesses under Gorbachev's reforms were burned down if they did not pay protection to the "Mafia" are gone. The notorious Anatoly Bykov, who headed the city's big aluminium plant and reputedly ordered several killings (I saw him on my previous visit sweeping through town in a motorcade made up of bodyguards), is in prison waiting trial for plotting to do away with Struganov.
Prison camps
People in Krasnoyarsk feel freer than at any time in their history. A computer memorial data book sponsored by the Ford Foundation has been created to record the names of the millions exiled to Siberian prison camps. They are also more aware of their rights. A music school director told me how the city council wanted to evict her from a fine old conservatory but the court ruled in her favour.
The Russian Easter took place when I was there on May 5th, and thousands of worshippers crammed into the Orthodox Church of the Resurrection, shuttered and empty throughout half-a-century, for midnight service. Everywhere around town, not just in the church but on the street and in apartments, people greeted each other on Easter Sunday with the words "Christ is risen", and the reply, after three kisses on the cheek: "He is indeed risen."