When in 1976 Garret FitzGerald made the first official visit to the Soviet Union by an Irish foreign minister, Joan and he were horrified by the manner in which officials then referred contemptuously to the "common working people" and spoke openly of the privileged lifestyle they had inherited from their bureaucrat parents.
In the subsequent Brezhnev era the Soviet system became corrupt as well as elitist.
When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989 I could not see how such an already corrupted system could make a rapid and smooth transition to a reasonably clean capitalist one. Unhappily some US economists failed to appreciate this reality, and when I spent some time as a consultant in Russia under EU auspices between 1993 and 1995 it was already clear that, in the absence of a legal order, the misguided ideologically based advice of these economists towards rapid privatisation of state industries was being used by corrupt officials or former officials to loot state resources.
Many of their financial gains were then exported to banks abroad.
That was one of the reasons the decade following the collapse of the communist system was a disastrous period for Russia. During this period there was a persistent decline in the country's GDP, with a corresponding sharp drop in living standards. In 1998 this process culminated in a collapse of the Russian financial system and an almost overnight further devaluation of its currency by 70 per cent.
But that marked the end of the period of Russian economic decline. Since then the economy has steadily recovered; its output has grown by one third in the past five years in real terms, including this year's estimated growth of 6 to 7 per cent. This one third rate of growth in output in five years is well over twice that of the US in this period and more than three times that of the EU.
During this year some of the capital sent overseas in earlier years by what are now known as the "oligarchs" started, for the first time, to return, as these enormously wealthy businessmen - who understand the Russian economy - now see in it a better growth prospect than can be found in the stagnant economies of western Europe. On a recent visit to Moscow as a director of the Greater Europe Fund, I came to the conclusion that the potential for growth of the Russian economy is huge.
The simple reason for this is that, although the Russian labour force is unlikely to expand from its present level, labour productivity - never high during the Communist era and further reduced by the events of the first post-Communist decade - has started to rise sharply, and this process is likely to continue in the decades ahead.
This is true of all three sectors of the economy: industry, services, but also, and not to be overlooked, agriculture. For, while farming today contributes only about 7 per cent of Russian output, the gradual dismantling of the collective farm system will yield very large increases in output.
Russia is now moving from being a net importer of grain to a significant net exporter, which will alter the balance of the world's grain markets.
As Russian industry is being turned around for market-based production, industrial productivity, stimulated by the return of "oligarch" resources and by foreign investment, including joint projects, will rise rapidly. Moreover, the development of business services, with their high output levels, will raise productivity in the services sector.
The negative side of the picture is the growth of inequity in the Russian social system in the aftermath of the Communist period.
First of all (and this is true of many eastern European countries also), there are now huge income disparities between rural and urban areas. This is apparent from the contrast between the 4-to-1 difference that exists between overall Russian and western levels of GDP per head, measured in terms of purchasing-power parities, and the much smaller 2-to-1 difference between urban living standards in Moscow and the west.
Next, in what is today a poor country, a quite small number of "oligarchs" are immensely wealthy.
Finally, the absence of progressive income tax, and the unwillingness for economic reasons to contemplate such a system (an unwillingness that was already evident to me in 1993), makes any improvement in income distribution unlikely in the foreseeable future.
What of the political situation? Is there any likelihood of economic growth being disturbed by political developments?
Russia appears to be at a stage of relative political stability. There is a clear expectation that Putin will be re-elected next year, and it is thought unlikely that his policies will be seriously challenged in the next Duma.
What is less clear is whether when re-elected he will reappoint his present Prime Minister - as some pessimists fear - or as the optimists hope, will decide to appoint a new and tougher figure who would pursue a more active reform agenda.
But either way it is not thought likely that Putin will attempt to challenge frontally most of the "oligarchs" about their ill-gotten gains. More probably he might seek, and probably secure, from these billionaires a greater contribution in some form to Russian economic development.
A recent disappointing development in Russia has been a more negative approach to human rights and press freedom, including the closure of two independent TV stations. Moreover, the manner in which the war in Chechnya is still being carried on continues to disturb the west.
As for external relations, those with China are good - important in view of the length of their common frontier and past disputes across this line. And there is a clear Russian concern to maintain a good relationship with the US and Europe, while protecting what are seen as Russian interests, for example, in Iran and Iraq. The EU, which has far more trade with Russia than the US, is seeking to develop a closer relationship with its large eastern neighbour.
Overall, the economic prospects for this huge country are now good, and there seems no prospect of their being disturbed by any political upheaval in the period ahead.